Cheated Hearts
by Simply Sarah
Summary: Their timing was never right. They were never right. But there were moments in time that existed where none of that mattered. –An epic Quinn/Puck saga.
1. Prologue

**A/N:** Oy vey. This took me quite a while. Yes, this would be that Puck-and-Quinn-have-a-history-fic I've mentioned that I wanted to do. Why wasn't it up sooner? **1.** The pre-Christmas season kept me quite busy with the usual holiday hoopla. **2**. I recently decided to go for my Masters degree and it took some time to hurriedly get that set up for the coming semester. **3.** After "Sectionals" I had a decision to make. Naturally if they were to have a history and the first interaction we see between Quinn and Puck in "Preggers" is quite angry and hostile then that means that everything has to fall apart at least once between them. That would be quite a depressing way to end a story so I spent some time deciding if I wanted to do that or take on the massive task of tackling not only their past, but their present (as in things that took place during the first 13 episodes), and their future. As you may have guessed by the use of the word "epic" in the summary- I decided to go with the latter. Since this story will then be so massive (in both chapter length and overall length) I attempted to get a head start by writing out the thirty or so page first chapter before posting this much shorter prologue. For more information on the potential updating habits of this story, please check my profile.

**Notes:** There are some important things to note for this story. The first is that though I did do a bit of research on Ohio to be able to include more accurate information, I've never been there and there were some things that googling did not allow me to find so for those of you reading from Ohio, I apologize for any horrible inaccuracies.

Second, though it will be mentioned in the story, just to make it absolutely clear, this story starts about the second week of April of Puck and Quinn's sophomore year of high school (since I believe that they are currently juniors and if not it's a little late to re-arrange everything).

Finally, I hope you enjoy the story.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Glee. If I did, they wouldn't be on hiatus for so long.

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**Cheated Hearts

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_0. Prologue: Two strangers meet on the road and find their time and their place_

Things ended between them a few times.

Things began between them a few times.

The thing that became clear though, to them at least even if no one else would ever know, was that it wasn't just a fling.

-o-o-o-

It starts in a way no one would expect: mid-afternoon in a bar on the outskirts of town.

It's not a bar exactly. It used to be. About a year earlier though they had their liquor license taken away for serving alcohol to minors. The owner had gotten lax with carding over the last decade or so because while it used to get plenty of traffic, being the main road to the towns to the North on the North Dixie Highway, since interstate seventy-five was built hardly anyone came out that way anymore. Sure, housing developments were ever encroaching towards the country where the bar was located, but it hadn't seemed to help business. A bar that couldn't serve alcohol didn't help business either. They were sort of a grill now, serving lunch and dinner, but it was barely being kept afloat by the occasional customer.

As fate would have it though, for a while, the best customers of the former bar would be two high school students.

She's there to escape.

He's there by chance.

The first time he comes there isn't her first time there. He walks in holding his little sister's hand and stops at the bar that's right in front of the door to ask the owner behind it if his sister can use their facilities. Though normally he'd charge a buck for such a thing (had to make money somehow), the owner couldn't charge two kids and simply told him around the end of the bar, towards the back.

Puck feels his sister clutch his hand harder as they wander further into the establishment. It's late afternoon outside and the sun is shining brightly, but it's dark in here despite that. "Come on," he encourages. As he leads her to the back, he thinks he notices blonde hair in a booth, but he's more concerned with his sister's imminently exploding bladder (or at least that's how she had described it in the car).

They arrive at the door labeled "Women's" in the hallway off of the small room of tables and booths off the side of the bar, but his sister hesitates. She looks up at him and says, "I don't want to go in there."

It looks kind of shady, but he doesn't want her to know that because he knows from driving this road that there isn't anywhere else to stop for a while. And they really don't have time to stop again anyway. So he lets go of her hand and walks into the restroom himself. He checks all the stalls, makes sure she'd be the only one in there and that there aren't other doors in it (just in case). "It's good," he declares coming back out to her, "Go ahead."

She heads for the restroom immediately. It's safe if he says so.

He hears her click the lock on the main door as soon as she enters and he's glad she's smart enough not to be too trusting. But since it's locked he doesn't need to stand guard right outside it. He wanders out of the hall, back into the room of tables and booths and checks the time on his phone. When he reads that it's already after four he curses softly to himself.

As he's putting his phone back, he notices a movement of blonde again out of the corner of his eye. He takes a few more steps into the room so he can see the booths. He can't tell who it is, but there's someone in the back booth in the corner, someone with blonde hair. It intrigues him. He wouldn't expect anyone to be in this place, everyone knows they don't serve alcohol anymore. He wanders a few more steps into the room out of pure curiosity. And he's shocked to see that he knows the girl with the blonde hair that's cowering and clearly trying to not be seen in the corner.

He momentarily forgets about his dilemma and why he's there because this is just too good. "Jesus Freak," he greets with a smirk as he saunters over to her table.

She may have been trying not to get caught, but she's learned from years of being popular and being her parents' daughter that the best offense is a good defense. "STD, how predictable for you to be in a place like this," she responds, small pleased-with-herself smile in place as always.

"And how _interesting_ for you to be here," he volleys, her comment rolling off his back like it was nothing. Usually he had a temper, but teasing her was fun (and rare in opportunity).

The smile falls from her face as she considers her options. Ever since she decided to spend time here she's worried about the possibility of running into someone she knows. She's prepared for this, made plans, but given who it was that caught her and the way he walked in, she hates what the most reasonable course of action is. She cuts past their crap and gets to the point, "I could put a pedophilic twist on the fact that you're here with a much younger girl. I'm guessing you don't want me to have any reason to spread that around school. Just like I don't want anything about me being here spread around school."

Her comment about making him sound like a perv for being with his sister makes him want to hit something. But it also makes him remember his sister and how they need to get out of here soon. He tries to move it along prompting, "What are you suggesting?"

"We both tell each other the real reasons we're both here. If one of us hears anything about ourselves and why we were here we know the other told and we tell their secret. Thus, we both have a really good reason to protect each other's secret, because it will in turn be protecting our own. A sort of mutually assure destruction," she explains. She was studying the Cold War when the inspiration struck for this particular back up plan. She figured knowing each other's secrets was like each of them having an atomic bomb and since neither one of them would want to be destroyed, they'd be compelled to keep those secrets and help the other keep theirs so that they didn't get hurt by the aftermath.

He knows his sister could be out at any second so he doesn't have long to think about this. It makes sense to him at first and given the lack of time, he'll just have to go with it. "Okay," he agrees, "you go first."

She picks up the pen lying in the AP chemistry textbook in front of her and starts playing with it, twirling it between her fingers anxiously. She looks away from him to the surface of the table because it's easier to say that way. She explains, "I…hate being at home. About a year ago my dad started coming home from work earlier and earlier. He gets home about the same time I do now and him and my mom are always there when I'm there. And they're suffocating. I can be in my room, just trying to get through my homework, and they'll be knocking on my door every five minutes because my mom wants to comment on how thinking that hard will give me wrinkles in my forehead or my dad just found his old tapes of the _700 Club_ and wants me to watch them with him. I tried hiding out at places in town like the library, while I tell them I'm doing charity work or tutoring or hanging out with friends, but it was too easy to get caught in town and have to come up with a reason for why I wanted an escape. Since I got my license last month and my dad got me a car I've been coming out here to get away from…everything."

He's not sure he gets that. But then again he doesn't really care. Except, she somehow feels a lot more real than she had just a minute ago. Before she was this untouchable teen royalty. Now, she was just another teenager with parental issues.

"Your turn," she prompts, finally looking at him again. She's glad to see that there's no smirk or smugness to him. She doesn't know him very well so she didn't know how he'd react. She worried he may just make fun of her, tell her she's being a stupid spoiled rich kid or something, and leave without following through with the deal.

He glances back to the bathroom. He doesn't know what's taking his sister so long, but he did check everything out so she should be okay. He knows he doesn't have much time left so he turns back to her and rushes through his reason. He dives right in, "My dad left seven years ago. Most of the time my mom handles everything really well. Takes care of me and my sister. But every once in a while she'll go through these periods where she drinks. A lot. They last anywhere from two weeks to about six, they're rough because she doesn't work during them and the last time she did it, last year, I had to use all of her savings to get us through it. She's about a week into one of those times now, we don't have any savings anymore. I got a job last week, supposed to start today- the Burger King, at the mall. But I can't leave my little sister at home where she'd either be alone or with my wasted mom. And I can't afford a babysitter. She doesn't really have many friends and I can't dump her on any of their parents anyway. So I'm trying to get her out to Beaverdam, my grandma lives out there right off of the Dixie Highway. If she doesn't finish in the bathroom soon though I'm probably going to be fired before I even start. I'm supposed to be at work at five."

"But the mall's on the south side of town," she points out because he's heading north for about twenty more miles and it's after four and he actually expects to get back to town and then across it in forty or so minutes? That's impossible.

"I know," he says defeated. He's just about accepted the fact that he's going to lose this job and he's almost ready to just head home and start looking for a new one. But if he could make it, they could really use money as soon as possible. He had to sell his Playstation to get them through last week and next he'd have to sell his guitar, which he really doesn't want to.

The words leave her mouth before she can stop herself, "I'll watch her."

"What?" he asks, because he's sure he had to hear wrong. Quinn Fabray did not just hear his pathetic life story and offer to help. That'd be like alternate universe weird.

Thank God she's good at thinking on her feet and that she's smart. She easily explains, "I babysit all the time. I'm good at it. Plus if I watched her here, if she didn't mind, you'd make it to work on time no problem."

It feels like this is out of pity and he hates pity. He responds, "Look if this is you being all charitable in some 'What would Jesus do?' moment, you don't need to. We'll be fine. I can handle this."

"This isn't charity exactly," she explains, her eyes narrowing because she wants to make sure she puts this simply enough that he can understand that her offer isn't about him (wouldn't want a guy like _him_ to get that kind of idea). She continues, "I could use a legitimate reason to spend even more time out of my house and it'd be even better if I wasn't lying to my parents. Plus volunteer work looks really good on college applications. In trade for my time I would naturally expect you to write a letter verifying that I performed volunteer services for you."

Well if there's something in it for her then it does sound much more believable that she's offering. He doesn't really know her that well, but he doesn't see it as realistic that she'd actually do something just out of the goodness of her heart. Now that he knows she'd expect something from him in return it feels less like charity too.

He glances at his watch again and realizes his sister has been in the bathroom for about ten minutes. "Hold on," he says to Quinn and jogs back to the small hall off of the room with the tables and knocks on the women's bathroom door. "Kelyn," he calls, "everything alright?"

"Yeah," she responds promptly, which relieves him greatly, "I'll be done in a minute."

A minute? She's killing him here. But he resists saying anything because it's his little sister and he just can't.

He's so going to lose this job though and they really need the money- even though the pay kind of sucks. He walks back to the table Quinn's at already begrudgingly accepting that he's going to have to do something he really doesn't want to because his family will be better off. She's working on homework or something again, but she looks up when he's standing at the end of her table again. He checks, "So you'd really watch her for free? And be willing to stay here until I get off at ten?"

Ten was a little later than she was expecting, but then again she had always looked for excuses to spend time out of the house and now that one had come up, she wasn't going to let it pass her by (even if she never thought she'd be doing any favors for Puck). "Yes," she answers to both questions.

He hates asking for help or accepting it when it's offered, but his situation has him backed into a corner and unfortunately this looks like the best way out. "Alright," he agrees, "if my sister is willing to stay here then you have a deal." He notices that Quinn isn't looking at him as he agrees though, she's looking behind him. He glances back and sees his sister standing at the other end of the small room waiting for him. Instead of walking by the four booths lining the wall, he cuts through the three tables in the middle to get to her quicker.

"Who's that?" his sister is fast to question, still looking at Quinn curiously.

The words he would typically describe Quinn with won't fly with his sister, especially if he's going to get her to agree to stay with her. It feels weird to say something verging on nice about her, but he forces himself to because the situation calls for it. "Quinn, I go to school with her," he answers, "and she's going to be here for a while tonight, just as long as I'm going to be at work actually and she offered to watch you. What do you think of that? Do you want to stay with her instead of stuffy, old grandma?"

He's not sure if Kelyn's listening to him because she's still looking at Quinn with a kind of wonderment. The idea that she's not listening gets validated when his sister doesn't respond to his question, instead commenting, "She's really pretty."

Pretty? Hot sure- that cheerleading uniform at their school does wonders for many fine females. He glances back to her because pretty was a word that threw him. And he sees it, her. How in the hell he missed it he's not sure. Usually he's on top of these things, noticing a girl, better than any guy he knows (and if this is lapse was cause by the pressures of responsibility then he hopes he never has any ever again). She's not in the cheer uniform. She's in a soft, blush pink sundress with some little white cardigan. Her hair is down. Her lips are pink. And her eyes meet his for a second as she glances up from her work. She's fucking gorgeous he realizes. And he has no idea how he just had a conversation with her because despite all his cockiness, right now she looks like the kind of girl who would make him nervous, who's so far out of his league it isn't even funny.

It's when her eyebrows wrinkle in confusion that he realizes he's just staring at her. Prompting him to turn back to his sister quickly. He doesn't have time to dwell on how un-smooth that was though, he really has to get going if he has any chance of making it to work. He asks his sister again, "So do you want to stay with her?" Again his sister doesn't respond, but she's not looking over at Quinn inquisitively anymore either. It feels like she's hesitating so he offers in way of persuasion, "I think you'll like hanging out with her. She's cool. And she's a cheerleader. Maybe she'll teach you something."

He isn't surprised when Kelyn's face lights up at the word cheerleader- he found her watching the _Bring It On_ movies just about any time any of them were on TV. "Okay," she agrees happily.

He tries to ignore that he is officially going to accept help and from Quinn Fabray of all people. He has things to do, his family to save. He walks his sister back out to his truck so she can get her backpack and the stuff she brought to keep her busy. When they come back in the bar he tells her to wait a few tables away for a minute, he needs to talk to Quinn alone. He rushes through his instructions because he knows he's running short on time. He comes back to her table quickly and doesn't wait for her to look up from her homework before reaching into his pocket and putting an inhaler down on the table as he explains, "She was diagnosed with asthma about four months ago. She's never had an attack but if she ever does I'm not letting her be more than two feet from an inhaler. Don't take her anywhere in your car. Don't leave here. If something comes up and you need to get a hold of me I'll have my cell, she'll give you the number. Don't mention anything about my mom. She doesn't know about our mom's…issues and as far as I'm concerned she never will. You tell her, and you should know that I have absolutely no problem hitting a girl."

The list of rules is ever so slightly insulting (it's not like this is her first time watching a kid), but she can hear the protectiveness in his tone too (which makes him seem less like the jackass she thought he was). So she simply responds as politely as she can, "Any other rules?" She may have said "rules" more biting than she intended, but practiced bitchy habits are hard to break.

Is she getting an attitude with him? Seriously? After she offered to help him? What kind of psycho crap was that? But as his eyes narrow at her a piece of her ensemble becomes apparent that he missed while he was staring at her before. Her cross. This prompts him to add, "Yeah, don't try to convert her. If she tells me you talked to her about Jesus and adopting him as her personal savior or some crap then I'll-"

"Hit me?" she guesses, mocking clear in her tone. "What makes you so sure I wouldn't hit you back?" she questions antagonizing him.

He laughs. "Because it might make you break a nail, cheerleader," he says, actually managing to make calling her a cheerleader sound like an insult.

"As if taking you down would require enough effort that I'd break a nail," she retorts easily. She's not really sure why she's arguing with him. Normally she only fought with people when she had a reason like to validate her social status or because they were losers and deserved it. But with him there was just something about the way he talked to her, sort of like she was completely unimportant, that really got under her skin.

"Oh it'd require a lot of effort on your part. Have you seen these guns?" he questions and he's about to take of his jacket to show her as he continues to prove that she's delusional, but his sister interrupts.

"Noah," Kelyn calls, still in the spot he told her to stay in.

His head snaps to her immediately and he remembers what he's doing here.

"Noah?" he hears Quinn question.

He turns to her briefly and explains quickly, "Only my mom and my sister call me that. If you ever repeat it-"

"I know, I know, you'll beat me up," she says and it still sounds teasing.

He lets out a quiet growl of frustration because he doesn't have time to argue with her about that anymore. He turns back to his sister and calls, "Kelyn, come here." His sister comes quickly and he doesn't waste time introducing, "Kelyn this is Quinn, she's going to watch you for the next few hours here while I go to work."

Quinn had been caught off guard for a second by the introduction. Despite sort of knowing him for almost two years, she's sure she's never heard Puck say her name. It sounds really weird. But she breezes past it and puts on a warm smile as she says, "It's nice to meet you Kelyn."

"Hi," the girl responds a bit timidly.

Puck figures that's good enough for him to leave, especially since he only has thirty minutes to get to work now and it's all the way across town. He crouches down to her level and asks his sister, "You sure you're okay with this? Because if you don't want to stay here you don't have to. I'll take you home right now and I'll just find a different job."

"I'm good here," she assures with a smile.

He smiles at her because she's a really good kid, makes things easier. "Alright, give me a hug," he orders, but she's happy to comply. He releases her after a few seconds and promises, "I'll be back in a while, okay?"

"Okay," she agrees.

He stands up and waits for his sister to put her things on the opposite side of Quinn's booth and climb in. Once she does he gives a small nod to Quinn, because he's not good at saying things like "thank you." He heads for the door before something comes up that ruins this.

As Puck gets to the door, Kelyn, who's now standing on the booth and watching him go calls using a term of endearment that was just theirs, "Bye egghead."

"Bye buba," he calls back automatically just as he reaches the door.

It's only when he gets outside and back into his truck that he realizes that Quinn Fabray just heard his sister's nickname for him and just heard him call his sister by his affectionate term for her. Also, he just left his little sister- who had many embarrassing stories about him- with the head cheerleader of his school. He has a feeling he could regret this, but in twenty minutes he's being taught how to work a fryolator, wearing a paper hat, and suffering through these humiliations because his family needs him to. In that he's reminded that it doesn't matter what may happen as a result of this, as long as his family survives this latest dark period, that's all that matters.

-o-o-o-

Once Puck left, Quinn sat at the table simply smiling while trying to come up with something to say. She had babysat before, but usually for people from church and at the kids' houses where they were comfortable and she had a TV to park them in front of or board games to play with them.

Luckily Kelyn was curious enough about something to speak up, "Are you Noah's girlfriend?"

That's not the kind of start she was looking for, but at least it's something. "No," she denies honestly. The girl seems little puzzled by that so she continues and asks, "Why would you think that?"

She shrugs and answers, "You're pretty and Noah's girlfriends are always pretty."

"Oh. Thank you," Quinn stumbles through the polite response. She honestly didn't think Puck had girlfriends. Sure he'd even gone out with her closest friend Santana a few times and they'd go out for up to two weeks straight, but she'd never heard anyone put the label of "boyfriend" on him. This is all getting strange though and she figures it would probably just be best if she tries to forget who's little sister she's watching. She notices the backpack and other bag sitting on the other side of the booth by Kelyn and questions, "So what'd you bring to do?"

"Stupid homework," Kelyn answers with distaste.

At the answer Quinn can completely see Puck in his younger sister, and not in a good way. What kind of example is he setting for her? She supposes it's good that he at least made her bring her homework to do, but obviously he wasn't setting a good example about how to feel about it. She suggests brightly, "Well I have homework to do too. How about we both do our homework first so we don't have to worry about it later? We can make a list of what you have to do so you get to cross it out and know exactly what you have left." Kelyn doesn't seem so thrilled with the idea of having to do her homework at all. Quinn doesn't know how to fix that really, but she tries on a whim, "It's what I always do." She figured the chances of Kelyn looking up to her at all already and therefore wanting to copy here were slim, so she's really surprised when it works and the girl digs out her homework and starts making the list with her help.

Quinn starts to think this just may go okay.

-o-o-o-

Puck feels like he's surrounded by grease. He just changed out of the stupid uniform and he still feels like he's greasy, like he can taste grease, smell grease. The other people working didn't seem to feel the same affliction, but he figures it may just be a price of running the fryolator. It's not a good price, but he really likes that it's in the back where no one can see him. If he has to wear a paper hat he's at least not going to get caught in it.

He leaves work the minute the clock strikes ten. If there's anything he's supposed to stick around for like cleaning up or something, he doesn't stay long enough to find out. Screw it, he's only here until his mom gets over her depression again. He hasn't eaten since a short shift apparently left him without dinner break rights, but he doesn't stop to grab something. Instead, he heads straight for the bar to get his sister.

When he finally gets back to Foster's he's surprised to see a few trucks in the parking lot. He finds the owners of the other vehicles as soon as he enters, both of them hunched over a plate of food at the bar. The bar is brighter than it was during the day since the lights are on inside now and he's glad to see that it doesn't look completely shady. Seems pretty clean at least. He heads to the far back booth without hesitation. Quinn's reading a book and doesn't seem to notice him approaching. When he finally comes around the back of the booth to the seat he left his sister in he finds her spread out on the bench, asleep.

He doesn't know when it was that Quinn noticed he was there, but suddenly she's whispering to him, "She tried to hold out, wanted to be awake when you came to get her, but she fell asleep about twenty minutes ago."

He nods and takes his eyes off of his sister for the first time since he got there. He notices her bags, neatly packed and on the floor next to her side of the booth. He notices a plate of food on her side of the table, and one on Quinn's too. "Shit," he swears, "I forgot about food. How much do I owe you?"

"Nothing," she responds immediately. She already thought this through.

"Look, I don't want your charity and I don't need it," he retorts, anger bubbling up within him. Sometimes he hates the guy his life forces him to be. He spent the whole night hating that he needed help, hating that he had to leave his sister with someone he didn't really know, hating that he had to work a crap job because his mom wasn't sober enough to go to hers, and most of all, hating that he knew it all led back to his jackass dad leaving them. But he was the man of the house now so he'd deal with all the things he hated and he'd make sure they were all fine, it was his job. And if someone offered him one more handout because they felt sorry for him for having to take care of his family, he probably wasn't going to be able to hold back hitting something anymore.

For the first time ever, she's a little bit afraid of him. It's not that she actually thinks he'd hurt her, she doesn't, but there's something in his eyes during his somewhat hushed outburst, like he's so near to his breaking point. She's never really been one to give into feelings over a thought out plan though so she continues with what she had planned to tell him, "It's not charity. We split my dinner."

"Then tell me what it cost so I can pay you for half," he demands, getting more than a little frustrated.

She can see him getting closer to that dangerous breaking point, but she refuses to be intimidated by that. She's Quinn Fabray, and she will get what she wants (especially since it's actually a rather nice thing she's doing, she thinks). She retorts evenly, "No."

"No?" He questions. He has no idea what's so complicated about this. He wants to pay for his sister's dinner; she had to be out some money paying for her, why in the world wouldn't she let him? Plus, since when do people say no to him? That never happens.

"No," she repeats firmly, "I know money is an issue for you right now and it wouldn't be very Christian of me to expect you to pay, would it?" She can see he's ready to retort (probably pointing out how she doesn't usually have a problem not being very "Christian" at school in her Queen Bee persona), but she quickly adds, "So I will accept your money for what you owe me in a month, when things have hopefully turned around, and no sooner."

He had been ready to fight her on this, but he snaps his mouth shut. He hates that she's doing something nice for him (and being kind of bitchy about it- which is all kinds of confusing). He hates that she has a point. It would help out if he didn't have to pay right this minute and chances are that in a month his mom would be back at work and they'd have at least some money again, making it far less of a big deal that he pays her. He knows what he should do, but despite having to do lots of things he hasn't wanted to for the sake of his family, doing them doesn't get any easier. "Fine," he agrees tightly, "next month."

"Good," she agrees, pleased-with-herself smile in place as usual because she got what she wanted.

He starts to pick up his sister's bags, sling them over his shoulder, because they have to get out of here- his day is still far from over.

She's thrown for a moment by the fact that he's already preparing to leave. She doesn't know what she expected of him, but somehow it wasn't that. She see's her opportunity slipping away so she blurts out, "When are you working again?" He stops what he's doing, stands back up and looks at her like she has some kind of ulterior motive, like he's suspicious. She feels like she's misleading him in her intentions, which she definitely doesn't want to do so she explains, "The more volunteer hours the better. And she was wonderful, it's easy to volunteer for something good again. If you need it." She's not exactly sure why she's doing this. It's not for the volunteer hours, though that is a plus. It will get her out of her house again and she does like that. Normally she doesn't feel compelled to help other people, but there's something about this that has compelled her. She tries to write it off that Kelyn was a good kid, much nicer to be around than other's she's watched, and in doing this she'd be helping to keep the girl oblivious to the bad in her world- keeping her in the days of innocence she wishes she were still a part of (before she realized just how much her parents don't care about her).

He wants to decline the offer. It was hard enough to accept help from the Jesus-Loving Head Cheerleader already. But he has to work the rest of the week (except Friday, couldn't talk his boss into letting him have it) and for the same hours. Logically, he knows it'd be a lot easier to bring his sister somewhere that's only about fifteen minutes from work and home than all the way nearly an hour to his grandma's. Plus, she called his sister wonderful and damned if he doesn't have a soft spot for that. "Tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday, four-thirty?" he proposes.

That's a lot of time, but whenever she's at her house she doesn't usually want to be there so she figures she might as well take the opportunity. "Sure," she agrees.

He nods, because he can't muster up the appropriate gratitude just yet. He adjusts his sister's bags and makes sure they're secure on his shoulder before he leans over his sleeping sister and picks her up. She molds to him, resting her head on his shoulder and slipping back into slumber immediately. Getting a closer look at her when he went to pick her up, and given how peacefully she's sleeping, he knows that his sister must have been pretty well taken care of. For that he finds the push he needs to say genuinely, "Thanks." He turns his back and proceeds to leave because he still isn't comfortable enough with getting help and being grateful for it to stretch the moment any longer than absolutely necessary.

She knows that a thank you would be the polite response, but she doesn't expect it from him. Especially with his eyes so genuine. His eyes? Since when does she notice them? She shakes her head because that wasn't normal and kind of weird and she proceeds to pack up her things.

Tonight, neither of their nights turned out like they expected. Neither one of them knew whether that was a good thing or a bad one yet. But with the promise of tomorrow, they would continue to find out.

(Here's something you should know: Eventually, she'll be pregnant by him and she'll insist on writing that occurrence off as the result of wine coolers and "feeling fat" and he'll go along with it. But this by chance run-in harshly shoved them onto a path that ensured that nothing between them could ever be so simple.)

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**A/N: Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed the prologue and PLEASE REVIEW if you have the time. **

**Happy New Years Eve and New Years to everyone!**


	2. Chapter 1

**A/N:** First, thank you to all of the wonderful people who reviewed! Second, yes, it is an update. Does that mean that I've made it through writing chapter two as per my plan to stay ahead of this massive story? Nope. I had hoped that would last a bit longer, but caving to not doing extra was inevitable. I'm honestly only about half of the way through the second chapter and I'm not finding tons of time to write since I've returned to school. But the extra push and pressure of having the next update be the chapter I'm working on feels like it could be very useful motivation at the moment.

Anyway, onto more important issues concerning this story….

To answer a few of you who wanted to know how to pronounce Puck's sister's name- and this is just my presumption as I've never actually met someone by this name- it's as if you squish the names/name abbreviations together- "Kel" and "Lyn" for "Kelyn." Does that make sense?

Also, it will be mentioned more, but just for easy reference: Kelyn is nine. Puck and Quinn are approaching the end of their sophomore year (presuming that they're now in their junior year), and she's not dating Finn during the prologue or this chapter and you will soon see more explanation in that area.

Please feel free to ask any other questions you have. It's a very slow development (for now), with some steps forward and then (possibly) even more steps back. They're both complex characters with a lot of personal issues and they seem pretty stubborn so it's not going to be smooth or easy to get from one place to another with them, but they will get there eventually and if there's any confusion along the way feel free to PM with questions or leave them in a review.

Oh, and the titles are all song lyrics. The prologue title was from Neil Diamond's "If I Don't See You Again." Chapter one's title is from Billy Joel's "And So It Goes." Chapter two's title will be revealed at the end of this chapter.

Happy reading!

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**Cheated Hearts

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_**I.**__ And I still feel I said too much, my silence is my self-defense_

(Here's something you should know: He's already thanked her once and he's going to keep saying it. Saying it won't get any easier for him, but that won't have anything to do with her. )

Puck doesn't pay Quinn the slightest bit of attention at school the next day. He doesn't try to talk to her, doesn't even glance her way in the halls. Not that she wants him to. He may be popular too, but she's still Quinn Fabray and that means that anyone can't just come up and talk to her. Rationally, she's glad nothing is even slightly different between them. But it feels weird that nothing is different because he knows something about her that only her sister knows and she knows something about his life that he clearly isn't sharing with everyone.

She concludes that the uneasiness she feels all day at school isn't really about his lack of acknowledgement, but about the fact that she doesn't trust people easily and she's being forced to trust him now when she really doesn't. In fact, when she got home the previous night she wrote out three plans to destroy him (just him, she really didn't see it as fair if any of them even slightly affected his sister) just in case he couldn't be trusted with her secret. She assumes that she'll have to use one of them, but she's surprised when the bell rings at the end of the last period and she hasn't heard any rumors about herself all day. She even double-checks that Santana (who would just love it if everyone found out she goes to a _bar_ to escape her parents) hasn't heard anything. It's not often that people surprise her anymore, but she supposes maybe Puck has too much to worry about right now to think of humiliating her. She tucks her plans safely in the back of her binder, because she figures that eventually, people always turn out to be exactly who you think they'll be.

She gets to Foster's early because tardiness is rude. She takes the time to set up her things; homework stacked by period they'll be due during. She almost takes the game she brought, Candyland, out of her bag, but decides to leave it hidden as is- surprises are always fun. She's just getting started on her World History homework when she hears the door open. It's more silent than a library in this place at this time of day so it's not hard to hear the slightest of noises. She looks up and notices Kelyn bouncing in and Puck shuffling in behind her, carrying her things.

Kelyn darts across the room to her smiling and is by her side of the table in a flash. "Quinn!" the girl exclaims happily.

Seeing the young girl so genuinely happy to see her, Quinn thinks that maybe that's why she's doing this. She honestly hadn't been sure of why she felt compelled to volunteer to keep watching Kelyn, but the girl really seemed to like her and she can't remember the last time someone was truly happy to see her like that.

She greets her with the elaborate hand clapping routine that Kelyn insisted they come up with as a sort of "secret handshake" the previous day. Quinn is smiling by the time they finish the complicated, quick routine, but whatever Kelyn was going to say to her next gets interrupted by Puck calling, "Hey." Quinn looks up to see him taking the last few steps to the table and realizes that though it got her attention, it wasn't intended for her.

He sets his sister's backpack and tote of activities down and questions her teasing, "You race right over here, not even going to say goodbye to me?"

Kelyn roles her eyes at her brother's mock hurt and gives him a quick hug before hopping in the other side of the booth as she calls, "Bye egghead."

"Bye buba," he returns and heads out.

As Puck leaves Quinn drifts off from the present momentarily into her own head. He didn't even acknowledge her presence. Not that she expected him to praise her for doing this nice thing for him, but she expected a "hello" and a "later" at the very least. Or actually, at the very least she expect him to call her one of the names she's heard him call her. She's pulled from thoughts of how rude he is when she notices him linger at the door. He glances back and looks at his sister, just checking one last time, and Quinn notices for the first time how tired he looks. She supposes, given everything she knows he's dealing with, she can let his lack of manners go, just this once.

She turns her attention back to Kelyn, and recalling the nicknames she just heard for the second time, she can't help asking, "What's with the nicknames? What do they mean?"

Kelyn is digging through her things, preparing to set them up just like she sees Quinn has, as she explains, "He calls me buba, it's like some Jewish word, it means doll because he said I looked like a doll when I was little. And I call him egghead because his head is shaped like an egg."

Quinn thinks about it and realizes the girl is right, but then again don't most people have at least a slightly egg shaped head? She's about to ask just this when Kelyn continues as she makes her homework list, "His head doesn't look so egg like when he has hair, but his mohawk makes it look more eggy. And when he does something stupid or silly I call him an egghead too because I think his hair cut is stupid too."

Quinn supposes that makes some sort of sense. She's fairly sure she's never known Puck with anything but he mohawk, but she could see how such a haircut could emphasize an egg-likeness. She wonders briefly if Kelyn's aware that in calling Puck an egghead when she thinks he's doing something idiotic she's actually using it by it's true definition. But she figures that may be a bit advanced for a nine year old and instead switches gears and let's Kelyn know the plan for the day, including the surprise game that she brought for them for after dinner.

Kelyn squeals and hurriedly begins her homework so they can get to the rest of the things Quinn said they could do after.

Quinn returns to her homework as well. (She has trouble concentrating on it at first. She'd never admit it, not even to herself, but she melted a little at Puck's nickname for his sister. And the idea that he may not be as awful as she thought troubles her.)

-o-o-o-

Puck's not sure how he makes it through the day. He doesn't remember the last time he got more than a couple of hours of sleep in one night. And the assistant manager was hassling him all night long, making him feel like hitting the little dweeb and he doesn't know what compelled him not to. These are the thoughts that distract him while he drives back to the bar, making him forget how he managed to get there all together.

He drags himself into the bar and heads straight for the back booth. He notices that it's playing out exactly the same as the previous night- Quinn buried in a book and his sister asleep.

"Thirty minutes ago, Candyland wore her out," Quinn offers to his unasked question without looking up from her book.

He notices the plates on each side of the table again. From the food left on them he can tell that they didn't share the same thing. He asks, "Next month still okay?" The vagueness of his question forces her to look up at him. He simply nods to the plates rather than saying anything else.

She catches on and answers curtly, "It's the only time I'm willing to accept reimbursement."

It makes him feel a little relieved since he doesn't really have the cash, but he hates accepting help so much that it makes him feel bad too. He gathers his sister's things in one swoop and picks her up and carries her out without a second glance or thought to Quinn.

Less than two minutes into the drive home, his sister wakes up and starts talking his ear off about Quinn. She had such a good time and Quinn is so smart and so cool and she beat Quinn at Candyland _four_ times. Kelyn tells her brother that Quinn said she'd bring her pompoms tomorrow. She then begs, "Can we go see her earlier?"

He's thrown by the question. She never asked to spend more time with their grandma (not that he can blame her for that). He questions, "You already spend five and half hours with her, you really want to spend more?"

"Yes," Kelyn responds immediately. "Please," she begs again.

He likes to give his sister what she wants, but even if he could manage to get through asking Quinn for more of her time, he's barely surviving the schedule they're on now and changing it and surviving feels impossible. "Sorry," he begins, "but we can't make your time with her any longer right now." He can see his sister's face fall out of the corner of his eye. He glances at her quickly as he pulls up to a stop sign and feels guilty. He offers, even though he knows it will force him to swallow his pride again, "Maybe next week or something you could spend more time with her though."

Kelyn beams.

Just as silence settles between them, he starts to sing along with the radio quietly. He knows these narrow country roads make her nervous and if she's not talking then she's not distracted from the fact that they scare her. Singing has always seemed to help though.

He sings softly, just in case she's on her way to falling back to sleep, but he's alerted to the fact that that's unnecessary when she interrupts him just as the Springsteen song is ending, asking, "Why don't you talk to Quinn? I thought you were friends with her?"

"What do you mean I don't talk to her?" he returns because he arranged all of this, he had to talk to her. "Did she say something like that?" he prods because making him look bad behind his back seems a whole lot like the Quinn Fabray he's semi-familiar with and not this do-gooder that's been watching his sister.

"No," Kelyn says honestly, "I don't think she noticed. But you didn't say anything to her when you dropped me off. I haven't heard you say much to her at all. Unless you talk when you get there to pick me up."

They don't really talk when he returns for her and, now that he thinks about it, he realizes Kelyn is right- he didn't talk to Quinn at all when dropped his sister off today. What is he supposed to say though? It's not like they're actually friends. Plus, it's not like he can flirt with her. That'd be pointless since she's all chastity-happy and he's seen her sort of flirting with Finn lately anyway. And there's no point going after something impossible. So, really, what are they supposed to talk about?

But as he's trying to get his sister to bed later, she keeps talking about how much she likes Quinn and what a good time she had with her. And all through the car ride to the bar the next day she's practically bouncing out of her seat in excitement for spending the next few hours with Quinn. It's a pretty crumby "bar" and it's five and a half hours, yet his sister is excited about it and she doesn't always do so well with strangers. He figures, despite all the things he still thinks about her based on her personality at school, Quinn must be okay and she has definitely been taking care of his sister really well. He supposes that means he should actually say something to her for a change.

By the time he's pulling up to Foster's he is committed to the idea of saying something nice to her, something that sticks with the lie he told his sister about them being friends. And then promptly dashing out of the place on the excuse that he has to get to work (he's not ready for bigger steps yet).

But as he puts his truck in park the thick vinyl shade to the far window to his right shoots up. Quinn is standing there in front of the window, hand catching the top of the now raised shade, turned to the side and smiling and talking to someone. The shade to the window closer to the door springs up and the bartender stands behind it, turned in Quinn's direction and talking too. He doesn't think about why they'd be pulling up the blinds on the so far constantly dark bar or why they'd be talking. Instead, it's her smile he's thinking about. It's a different smile than he's seen on her. She's a cheerleader so smiling is part of the jig, but he's sure that's not the smile she's wearing while she's cheering during games. It's genuine, and so warm that he thinks she may actually radiate. But most importantly, it's intimidating as hell.

He trails his sister into the bar again, Kelyn racing over to greet Quinn eagerly again. But Quinn isn't all the way over at the table she's near the bar and just finished laughing at something presumably said by the bartender who is now retreating back to the other side of the bar. (Her laugh, it's another thing that's intimidating.) Kelyn and Quinn do the same hand clapping thing he saw them do the day before, and she's smiling at his sister in that same way she was in the window, the kind of smile that makes his heart feel warm in his chest at the sight of it.

Kelyn seems to remember her mistake from yesterday because she promptly stops herself from asking Quinn all the things she wants to about what they'll do that day (like if she brought her pompoms) and walks back to the entrance and hugs her brother. He hugs her back and just as he does she pulls away, takes her bags from his hands, yells, "Bye egghead," and races to their usual table. She goes so quick she leaves Quinn and Puck in their places.

He's standing a few feet away from her. She laughs lightly as she watches Kelyn dart across the room. She slowly comes to face him again once Kelyn is in the booth. Her smile is still warm and her hair is down- except for these little clips at the sides. He thinks that if angels existed (which they totally don't- everyone knows they're just non-scary ghosts) they'd look like her. And it doesn't have anything to do with her faith or this nice thing she's doing for him. But it has everything to do with how she seems to look so radiant in a white halter-like shirt and jeans in a crappy bar.

Despite his enormous ego, his words escape him. He's simply standing there meeting her eyes for second after passing second while her smile keeps shrinking in size, millimeter by millimeter. He needs to say something though. His sister thinks they're friends and despite all his faults and bad habits he indulges on a regular basis, he's not tuning into the bad influence in her life; no way, no how (even if he's the bad influence in his own life).

(And, he supposes, despite all the things he's ever thought about her, the girl standing in front of him deserves him to say something too. His sister is happy in a time in their lives where she shouldn't be. And he knows it's thanks to the cheerleader even if he doesn't understand why or how she's doing it.)

He can hear his sister rustling with her things in the booth. Thinking of her, he forces out words that don't really qualify as typical conversation between friends. They're words he doesn't often use, but he knows they matter here, now. "Thank you, for all this," he forces out quickly, but seriously.

There's a beat of silence. He stays still, there, because he doesn't want to look like he's running even if he'd prefer running to an uncomfortably honest moment.

She's just looking at him, smile completely faded from her face now. It's like she's trying to determine whether or not he means it. And since he does, he just stands there and waits, stares right back at her.

Apparently she decides to believe that he's being sincere, because her smile returns- not as big as before, but just as warm. "You're welcome," she responds.

It's not a mushy moment (just real), but it feels like it could head there. Thankfully she seems to be as uncomfortable with the idea of having some feel-good-moment with him as he is with her because she diverts her eyes from his for a second checking the clock and mentions, "You know they started doing construction on Elm street today, it's probably going to make it take longer for you to get to work."

It's an effective distraction from what he's been thinking about her and her smile and the few words he just said to her because what she said could be a big inconvenience- the mall is on Elm. "I've been driving down Elm all week. They haven't had any signs posted," he points out hoping she'll realize she's got the wrong info.

She shrugs, not knowing why nothing was posted, and supplies, "It's been a notice in the paper for a few weeks."

Damn. His history teacher was right when he said that not keeping up with the news would bite him in the ass someday. "Shit," he swears angrily under his breath. He's probably going to be late now. He better get the female assistant manager or the female manager today so he can charm his way out of trouble if need be. He feels like simply racing out the door, but he is aware of the fact that that would be rude. "I guess I better hurry then," he offers instead of an actual goodbye to her- which still feels like it would be weird (they're still not friends). He shouts a goodbye to his sister and finally gets to flea the scene as he's felt like doing since the second he got there.

-o-o-o-

Quinn can't remember the last time she had so much fun cheerleading. Sure, winning nationals was fun because winning always is. But she helped Kelyn rush through her homework, ignoring her own, and taught the younger girl the fun cheers she learned as a girl at cheer camp. It seemed like so long ago. And maybe eight years is a pretty long time, but she's pretty sure it shouldn't feel like a different life. And that's what it feels like. Her childhood is some distant memory, caught in a now foreign world- a world where everything was simply good instead of a world where everyone simply tried so hard to pretend it was that way.

"Teach me something cool to show Noah. Something to cheer him up," Kelyn insists, playing with the pompoms Quinn brought and drawing the older girl from her thoughts.

"Sure," Quinn agrees easily, but rather than trying to think of something that qualifies as cool, she wonders about the second part of what Kelyn said. She doesn't care about Puck because he's Puck, but she does worry about the effect of whatever's going on with him is having on Kelyn. So, she asks, "Why does…your brother need cheering up though?" She paused before saying his name because she's not sure the girl would recognize the name he seems to go by to everyone else and calling him Noah seemed too weird to go through with.

Kelyn shrugs, pulls at the strings of the pompoms as she explains, "I don't know. He just doesn't seem normal. But mom's had to work like all the time lately. And he's working too. I guess he doesn't like working. I don't know why he does it."

Quinn had been wondering how Puck was hiding his mom's drinking from his sister. She supposes whatever her drinking consists of, it must be able to keep up with Puck's cover. And she gets why Kelyn would be concerned that one of the few people in her life suddenly seems different, but she's not sure if there's anything to do to cheer him up when nothing Kelyn could do for him would stop all the things she knows are probably weighing on him. She doesn't want to disappoint the girl or expose her to the truth though. Despite hating that her parents are always pretending now, she understands why they played happy when she was young and for the wonderful memories she has, she's grateful for it. She wants Kelyn to have the same thing- keeping up the charade of everything being okay is why she's here after all; trying to keep it up probably being the only reason Puck's letting her help.

She comes up with a cheer that may make Puck laugh- if it's coming from his sister at least- and some moves for Kelyn to do that he probably wouldn't expect her to be able to do. She's very patient with the girl in all the things she teaches her. She never once repeats anything Coach Sylvester would say to her or any of the things she would bark at the team. And despite the fact that she had always enjoyed being the person with the power and being able to do the dictating, teaching in this friendly, calm, easy manner is much more fun.

Having fun with Kelyn doesn't come as a surprise to her though. She's always liked kids. There was something freeing about being around kids. They never expected anything of her that anyone else did. Any kids she watched just wanted to be taken care of and entertained and she seemed to naturally have just the right kind of charm to get along with any she came across easily.

With Kelyn she was going a little more above and beyond than she usually did though. Not that she didn't always try to plan fun things to do with the kids she's watched, but she knows that since she spent an hour in her attic last night digging out her old pompoms so she could let Kelyn keep them, she's definitely doing more for this girl than she's done for any other. At first she tries to convince herself that it's just because Kelyn is sweet. But she's gotten along good with all the kids she's ever watched so far and despite her phenomenal powers of persuasion she can't convince herself that anything she's really doing is for Kelyn. She does genuinely want Kelyn to have a good time because she feels sorry for her that she's stuck in a troubled home life. But she's going above and beyond with the girl because of Puck. Not because she cares about him, but she cares about what he could say. He could always make up some horrible rumor about her and she's pretty confident that he wouldn't even need a reason to do it. (Which, if she's being honest with herself, she has in common with him. She doesn't need to have an annoying run in with that Rachel Berry to be prompted to draw crude pictures of her on the bathroom wall.) Puck has never randomly attacked her before and she doesn't suspect he will any time soon- unless she gives him a reason to. It's plain as day that he cares about his family and that he'd do anything for his sister so she doesn't feel she's overreacting in fearing that if she even slightly messes up with Kelyn she'd end up the subject of Puck's wrath. Not that she thinks he'd actually hit her like he threatened, but she doesn't doubt that he'd be willing to do some pretty awful things to anyone that hurts his sister.

Thinking about her motivation for starting this whole teaching Kelyn cheer stuff thing, Quinn realizes that the girl could get hurt. She has Kelyn attempting stuff that isn't entirely safe (cartwheels and such) in an environment that isn't meant for it (the bar has hardwood floors). But she already promised Kelyn and they've been doing it for an hour now and nothing bad has happened. She doesn't want to upset Kelyn by stopping, but Quinn's worry escalates exponentially and she tries to mainly teach as simple and completely non-dangerous cheers for the second hour of cheer coaching that Kelyn insists on.

-o-o-o-

Puck got lucky and the female assistant manager was working tonight and let him off the hook when he was ten minutes late to work due to the construction Quinn told him about. All he had to do was smile and lie to the woman and she was so easily swayed to just forget about it. That's the great thing about working for women he realizes. Besides the other assistant manager, the guy, is a total tool, the women are easy to persuade into doing whatever he wants. That's how he ended up talking the manager- also a woman- into giving him two shifts on Saturday and on Sunday. On Sunday they close earlier and start a little later so he only gets nine hours instead of twelve and working that long either day doesn't sound like his idea of a good weekend, but he can do the math and he knows that his family really needs the money working that long will get him.

The minute the clock strikes ten he's out the back door of the Burger King and on his way to his truck. He heads for Foster's as usual.

Working the fryolater for the last few hours had given him time to think about the last time he was there, when he dropped Kelyn off and had that weird…something with Quinn (he wouldn't call it a moment- he wasn't a girl so he didn't use that word and even if he did she's not someone he'd really want to use it with, he doesn't think). He figures those few seconds (minutes) where his mind couldn't seem to stop thinking about Quinn as being warm (and where his heart started to pound so loud in his chest his ears could barely make out any other sound) was a total fluke. Quinn Fabray was an ice queen and everyone knew it. She was bitchy and cold and a day existing where she wasn't had about as good of chances as hell freezing over. That was the consensus of everyone he knew. Sure none of the guys at their school cared about that because she's hot, but the fact that something about her while they're in the bar made him forget about her icy demeanor completely had him confused. He had a lot more important things to worry about so he assumed that his tired mind must have just been playing tricks on him for him to think anything contradicting popular opinion about her.

So when he gets to the bar Puck assumes that Quinn will have the frigid personality everyone associates with her. He goes in and sees everything is the same as the past nights. Quinn is reading something- looks like a textbook tonight and she's writing stuff too. And Kelyn is asleep on the bench on her side of the table.

He intended to say hi to Quinn. No matter what her motivation or how she is at school, she's doing something nice for him and since he doesn't plan on repaying her for that he figures he could at least say hi. And he totally doesn't wuss out, but she does look like she's in the middle of something so he swallows his intended word (and it doesn't have anything to do with the way that despite the lighting that's so low inside that it almost makes it difficult to tell that the red is faded on the wood walls, she still seems to glow. No, his loss of ability to talk didn't have anything to do with that, not at all.)

Since saying hi to her isn't an option Puck goes right for leaving. He picks up his sisters bags, but realizes that something that wasn't there before is sticking out of one of them. This presents a dilemma because he hadn't planned on talking to her now, but he can't let his sister steal from her either. "Uh," he starts out and he'll try to tell himself that it wasn't as completely un-smooth as it was, "I think Kel's trying to take your…cheer things."

She looks up from her work, eyes going to his and then flicking to the item in his hand. "No those are for her," she says about the pompoms he's gesturing to and returns to her work.

He doesn't understand this, but more importantly he doesn't like it anyway. He takes them out of the bag and puts them on the table, partially covering up the work she's returned to and getting her attention again. He tells her, "She doesn't need your stuff and we don't need your charity." He means himself. He doesn't need other people's charity and really hates getting it too.

He's not surprised when she doesn't apologize for the gesture or shy away timidly because she made a mistake. She's Quinn Fabray and she's not intimidated by his bull-headed pride. She simply picks the pompoms up and holds them out to him as she explains, "I've been cheering for years, I've accumulated a lot of these. Plus, your sister would like to show you something special she learned today because she wants to do something nice for you and she'll need these."

She's holding them out to him and there's something in her eyes that makes him think that there's no way she'd let him get out the door without them. If it was him, he knows the reason would be because they're important to his sister. He thinks her motivation must just be stubbornness and he's a lot annoyed at it, but just a little glad. At least now he knows that if he continues to deny the gift, he'd be giving up something that means something to his sister and he just can't do that. So, he swallows his pride, looks away from her and at the object instead, and hastily takes them back and stuffs them in the bag. He moves to get his sister so quickly after that he almost misses Quinn's small triumphant smile as she turns back to her work.

He picks up his sister and gets her head settled on his shoulder, arms around his neck, and he turns to leave. He makes it a full step before he pivots back. He really has no intention of doing anything nice for Quinn ever despite the fact that she just seems to inexplicably be adding to the list of things she's been doing for him. But the guys currently sitting at the bar look pretty gruff and there's practically no light in the dirt parking lot out front. She seemed to notice his non-departure because she looks back up at him from her work without him having to say anything.

He can't just stand there and stare, he refuses to, and he also refuses to look like he has a difficult time getting the words out (which he does, he's not used to these). He asks (though his tone was rather demanding for a question), "You don't walk to your car out there alone right?"

She seems surprised by the question as her eyes widen just a bit and it makes him self-conscious. He wants to say something to explain his actions, but she asks, seeming a bit amused, "Don't tell me you care now, do you?"

Smart-ass talk is a situation he's familiar with so he feels a bit more at ease and responds in kind, "Yes." Despite how in control she always seems, she can't hide the shock as he dropped that bomb- which is what he intended just so he could elaborate, "If you get yourself into trouble I'd have to find someone else to watch my sister for free by tomorrow, which would put me in quite a bind."

She rolls her eyes at him (which may be the most freakin' adorable thing he's ever seen) and caves and answers his question for real, "Well it's unlikely you'll find yourself in that position. Addie, Foster's wife, saw me heading out the first time I was here until dark and she insisted to her husband that he walk me out. Ever since then he's continued to walk me to my car if it's dark out even if no one else is here."

He thought she'd respond with something like Jesus would protect her so he has to catch up to the real answer. "Nice of them," he comments and wonders, "do you know them or something?"

"Or something," she responds vaguely. She glances down at her book in front of her and elaborates, knowing she didn't want to say anything on the subject again, "I've been here a lot over the last month. They don't really have any other consistent customers."

He nods. He knows she's referencing the reason she said she comes here in the first place and it seems like she doesn't want to talk about it. He knows what that's like because he doesn't want to ever have to talk about why he's there again, especially with her. So maybe he is going to do something nice for her, because he's not going to press the issue or tease her, he's going to let it go. So he does. "Cool. See ya then," he says and stalls a second to see if she's going to look up again, see if she says anything back.

She does. She looks up, meets his eyes- a certain vulnerability there he's not used to seeing, especially on her. She seems to take him all in- standing there and holding his sleeping sister. She smiles a little and returns, "Yeah, goodnight."

He finally leaves. The thoughts that plague him the rest of the night (all about Quinn), lead him to try and convince himself that he's been so tired his mind continued to play tricks on him that night. In the morning, he decides to try visiting the nurse to see if he can get out of class and catch up on sleep.

-o-o-o-

Quinn passes Puck in a hallway the next day, Thursday, between second and third period and it's like something stops. He knows something that no one knows about her. What he knows makes it clear that she spends most of her days playing the part of someone who's completely happy and satisfied with their life, but really, she's lost. And that truth that he knows about her, one of the walls that she can't have up with him, it's like it makes them bound together in some way. Only she doesn't want to be bound to Puck- the school bully. She doesn't want to be bound to anyone. She doesn't want to let people her in because she doesn't want them to matter. She's not staying in Lima any longer than necessary and she refuses to care about anyone here enough to reconsider that decision.

She resolves that the fact that he knows something about her can't change anything about them. She has to stop giving into impulses around him to act like herself, do what she wants, because despite the fact that she technically can given he knows the secret that she's usually playing pretend all other times, there's really no reason for him to know more than that. She can't get to know him as the real her and she can't know him beyond the angry-jerk role he plays at school. Because letting each other see anymore of their real selves would be like making a connection (more than they already have) and she doesn't want to be connected to anyone in Lima. She just wants out.

But then she thinks of Kelyn and she can't pretend she doesn't care about her or that she doesn't want her to have a good time tonight, their last night together. And being icy to Puck to make sure she doesn't slip up and be real with him anymore wouldn't be good for Kelyn to see, it wouldn't help make it a good night for her. So being as cold as she is in school is out, but Quinn goes to the bar that afternoon committed to the idea that she's only going to be cordial- something her parents and their world has trained her well in- to keep up appearances for Kelyn, but beyond that she will have no further interaction with Puck. Just like she also won't see him or interact with him again after tonight. They're in the same social circle so she'll see him, but she'll forget what she knows about him, what he knows about her, and hope that he does the same for her.

When she gets to the bar she goes to sit in the same booth as usual. Foster comes out from the back and greets her, asks if she wants light in there again like she had yesterday for when they practiced cheer. She declines the offer because she brought movies and crafts for today, and she could tell by all the dust on them that he must never raise those shades. He tells her he's working on fixing the old deep fryer in the small kitchen back behind the bar and if she needs anything or if someone unexpected comes in, don't hesitate to come back and get him.

She goes through her things and sets up all of the stuff. She spreads out the crafts on the table across from the booth- she knows Foster won't mind. But she keeps her laptop and the movies she brought hidden so it can stay her special surprise for later. As soon as she has everything in place, and despite the fact that Puck should be dropping Kelyn off any minute, she hurriedly gets to work on her schoolwork. She's an honor student, straight A's, but she's been rushing to get her work done the last couple of nights and though her marks haven't yet been effected, she can feel that it's sub-par. She's been keeping up in most of her classes fine, but it's only about three weeks until Advanced Placement tests and she's never taken any before so she'd be lying if she said she wasn't nervous about it.

Just as she starts to make progress on an outline for her English class, Kelyn comes barreling through the door. She makes it all the way over to the table before Puck comes through the door carrying her things. "Hey," he yells to his sister, "what have I told you about waiting for the car to stop before getting out of it?"

Kelyn turns around and shrugs at her brother carelessly. She points out in a fashion that shows she truly is related to Puck, "If your truck had locks you wouldn't have to tell me anything."

Quinn almost laughs, but catches herself and bites the insides of her cheeks to keep from bursting out. She can't, however, stop the large, amused smile from spreading across her face. She knows what Kelyn did was wrong, but her retort was just so smart-ass- it was like Puck's personality was being shoved back at him to see how he liked it.

Puck proceeds towards the table and notices Quinn's expression. "What, you're on her side?" he questions Quinn.

"No," she responds immediately, trying very hard to erase all traces of a smile from her features. She turns to Kelyn and admonishes, "Getting out of a moving vehicle is very dangerous. Promise you won't do it again?"

Kelyn looks guilty and swears, "I promise."

Puck sets her things down by the bench that she's just climbed into and questions, "You're going to listen to her after she asks you once and you haven't listened to me about it, your own brother, despite the dozens of times I told you?"

Kelyn shrugs and picks up her backpack from where he dropped it and drags it on the bench with her. She offers, "I'm a girl egghead. I get to be complicated."

"Unfortunately," Puck mutters. "This your doing?" he directs at Quinn.

"I can't say," Quinn says seriously. She looks to Kelyn and elaborates, "Sitters have a strict confidentiality code with those they watch." She winks at Kelyn and the girl smiles appreciatively and turns to look smugly at her brother because she knows he didn't get an answer he wanted.

He rolls his eyes and concedes knowing he can't hang around there and make it to work on time, "Fine. Have fun with that then." He proceeds to leave.

Once he's near the door, and without looking up, Quinn watches as Kelyn yells, "Bye egghead."

"Bye buba," he calls back immediately just as he heads through the door and Quinn thinks she can hear the smile in his voice. It's nice, she thinks, the obvious affection he has for his sister. It's so unlike his persona at school. So different the Noah/egghead/Puck who's a good older brother here could be a completely different person than the Puck-the-brute at school.

She shakes her head to rid it of thoughts of him. She really doesn't need to be spending any more time thinking of him (not that she spends any time thinking about him now, she totally doesn't…much).

She helps Kelyn rush through her homework again. It probably doesn't set the best example, but she figures that should Kelyn ever find out the truth about why her mom doesn't seem to be around right now, she deserves some good memories from this time. Plus, she wants to get to the crafts of making beaded necklaces and bracelets too. Logically she knows that she is and has been participating in children's activities with Kelyn, but she doesn't feel self-conscious about doing them or enjoying them like she thought she would. Instead she's simply enjoying them. Doing the types of things, like making friendship bracelets, it reminds her of when she was younger. And just for a bit when she's doing these things with Kelyn, she can ignore the fact that she's older and her world isn't so perfect anymore. She can be as innocent and naïve as the child she's sitting across from again.

Later, as Kelyn ties a bracelet she made for Quinn onto Quinn's wrist, she thinks about how this is their last day together. She's thought about it before, but it hits her all over again. Her parents questioned her about the extended hours she told them she'd be babysitting this week. "That's an awfully long time. We'll barely get to see you," they said, but she swears they haven't even noticed that she's been gone the past couple of days. She doesn't want to go back to that. But then again she doesn't want the girl she's with life to continue to be the way it was this past week, for the girl to need her to watch her. So, in an odd un-selfish turn, she's actually been praying that Kelyn gets her mom back to normal and doesn't need to spend time away with a stranger like her.

(She doesn't think about how her prayer would affect Puck positively too. Or at least given the fact that she swears she doesn't really ever think about Puck, she swears she doesn't think about him in these instances either.)

-o-o-o-

Puck got stuck working with the male assistant manager tonight. He swears that it took everything in him not to punch the crap out of the little twerp. The guy just seemed to have something against him and kept getting on his ass. But as far as he knows he's done nothing to deserve it.

When the time comes to leave he does so even more eagerly than usual. On the drive to the bar he considers that maybe he should actually be working harder in school because if doing good in school means never working a job like this again, it'd be worth it to be one of those good students (suckers) at their school.

He gets to the bar and notices two cars leaving as he's pulling into the dirt lot out front. He's not sure how the place stays open with so few customers (the two pulling out leaving the place to now be empty besides the two people he knows are still there), but he doesn't give it much thought. He also doesn't give much thought to how it smells different when he walks in. While the former he didn't think about because he didn't care enough to, the latter he was distracted from by immediately noticing that he couldn't see sunny blonde hair sticking out of the back booth. Though he figured she could just be hunched over some book, his pace to the table quickened. Fear was further stuck into him when he got a few steps away and could plainly see that no one sat on Quinn's side of the table. He raced to it then.

"Hey," a voice came quietly as he hurriedly came to a halt at the bench his sister was usually on.

He looked down and let out a big sigh of relief. Quinn was sitting on his sister's side of the table with his sister asleep and her head resting on Quinn's lap.

"She fell asleep while we were watching _Pocahontas_," Quinn explains and he notices the laptop out in front of Quinn.

He doesn't have a chance to respond before the rotund old man that's usually behind the bar is suddenly coming up right beside them holding out a platter of food. He calls, "Hey Quinn," he gets to the table and notices Kelyn sleeping and apologizes as he continues quieter, "Oh sorry. We just made this fried chicken. Keep in mind it's our first attempt in a while."

Quinn looks apologetically at the kind older man and declines, "I really can't eat anymore. I already broke my mandatory cheer diet trying all that stuff earlier and now I'm so full."

He waves it off and responds, "Eh, you can't be full, you're still the size of a rail." He's been serving Quinn food quite a bit though and he knows that usually she just orders a salad and tonight, after fixing the deep fryer, he managed to get her to try their chicken strips and fries- the early test batches too because it's been years since they tried out these recipes. So he doesn't push any further and instead focuses in on a new target. "What about you?" he asks Puck. "Try out our fried chicken? On the house." Puck starts to open his mouth, but he feels like he's going to get his offer rejected so Foster interjects, "Come on. Quinn says you work all night and you have to be hungry. I was a teenaged boy once, I remember that appetite. It caught up with me eventually." He laughs, patting his large gut.

"Sure. Thanks," Puck says taking the patter of chicken from him.

"And let us know exactly what you think of it. This is the first batch we've made in years. Gotta perfect it again," Foster adds before he heads back to the kitchen.

Puck stands at the end of the table simply looking at what must be six chicken thighs and breasts piled onto the plate now in his hand. He knows it'd be weirder if he sat somewhere else, so even though it feels awkward to sit with Quinn he puts the plate down on the opposite side of the table from her and his sister and sits. He would have refused the food if he had thought this part through, but he can't remember the last time he had a good, hot meal and he couldn't resist free food.

"All the food tonight was free," Quinn informs him as he begins digging in and he supposes that it's the tactful way of saying he doesn't owe her for his sister tonight. She elaborates, "Foster fixed their deep fryer earlier today so him and Addie have been in the kitchen trying out all their old recipes again and forcing us to be their taste-testers. Now that you're here they'll probably be bringing out a lot more for you to try too."

As if on cue an older woman he's never seen before comes through the door to the backside of the bar that he assumes leads to the kitchen. She's carrying two baskets of something. "I warned Fos that you couldn't possibly be hungry anymore. He just doesn't get teenaged girls though," Addie said with a warm smile to Quinn as she came out. She sees Kelyn sleeping and questions, "Aw, how long ago did we lose this one?"

"About fifteen minutes," Quinn answers as she glances at the girl and softly strokes some of the hair off of her face.

Addie's smile gets a little bigger as she continues to watch the sleeping girl for a second. But she seems to remember her purpose and greets Puck, "You must be Puck. I'm Addie. How do you like the chicken?"

"Way better than KFC," he answers sincerely. It may just be because he was really hungry, but right now he doesn't think he's ever had better fried chicken.

"That's what we like to hear," Addie replies with a small chuckle and places a basket of onion rings and one of fries on the table next to him. "Give these a try then too. If you were one of my boys I wouldn't give you so much fried food, especially without any vegetables- though that's probably how they all eat now, all grown up and on their own. But you promise to eat some fruit and vegetables tomorrow, right?"

He knows he probably won't, but the woman is piling free food on him, he figures the least he could do is play along. "Yes ma'am," he responds pleasantly.

"Alright," she says with a smile and takes her leave, "I better get back there before Foster starts making something else and creates another mess he won't clean up."

As the door to the kitchen keeps swinging after she passes through it they hear, "If you're only trying to deep-fry a banana then why is there garlic powder everywhere?"

This was followed by, "Aw, woman, I know what I'm doing just let me take care of it."

One of them must have remembered that Kelyn was sleeping because they're suddenly quieter after that. But them being quiet makes silence settle over Puck and Quinn too. Awkward silence.

Quinn shuts the laptop in front of her and slides it to the side. She eyes her books on the other side of the table and knows she can't reach them without having to lean up in her seat. She doesn't want to risk waking Kelyn so she asks gesturing to it, "Can you hand me that top notebook over there?"

Puck wipes his hands on the napkin that was brought out with the plate and hands her the notebook before returning to munching on the chicken. He glances at the front of the notebook as he hands it to her though and finds what it reads odd. He can usually be pretty good about ignoring situations, like awkward silence, but, and he doesn't know why-maybe he's just too tired- he doesn't want to do it here. So he questions as she opens the notebook and starts scribbling things down, "French? I thought you're in Spanish one like most of our class is?"

"I am," she confirms without looking up, though a bit surprised that he knows that about her. She elaborates without thinking about it, "I came to the high school to take French one, two, and three throughout middle school. I did French four as independent study last year since they don't offer the class and since they also don't have AP I had to finally convince them to let me take the AP French exam this year. But not having it at all all year has left me needing to study for it way more than my other AP test."

"You have more than one AP test?" he questions because as far as he knew, though he wasn't very well informed on the practices of honor students, no sophomores took those. And he realizes, "And if you already took a bunch of language courses why are you in Spanish?"

"I have AP chemistry too. I took chemistry last year, AP this year. And I'm fairly good at languages and I had an elective to fill so I signed up for Spanish," she answers distractedly as she tries to work through a translation exercise. She realizes what caught her off guard about this before though and returns to it, "How did you know I was taking Spanish though? You're not in my class?"

"Nope, I take German," to her confused look at that he explains, "my mom thinks it's a good idea to know 'the enemy's' language- long story." He pauses for a few fries before addressing her other question, "I know you're in Spanish though because Finn's been telling me about how he thinks you're flirting with him in that class. You are flirting with him, right? He seemed confused about it but I told him that that's what it sounds like you're doing."

"Yeah I am," she answers, attention momentarily straying from her work, "I have been since last week. And he still hasn't asked me out." It was actually annoying her quite a bit. What kind of guy doesn't jump at the chance to ask _her_ out? She had made it pretty clear she'd say yes, in her opinion.

Puck laughed despite his mouth-full of onion rings. He swallowed before he replied, "Well if you want a guy who takes action quick, Finn's not the guy. Not that he can't be smooth with girls, of course he can, he's my boy, but he's kind of got that whole shy, awkward thing going on girls like. Why do you want to go out with him anyway?" He's not sure what prompted him to question why Quinn wanted his friend. He'll eventually settle on that he's just looking out for his friend because Quinn Fabray seems like the type of girl that would want a pet more than a boyfriend and he doesn't want to see his best friend get put on a leash by her. Yeah, that's totally why his curiosity was piqued by Quinn's love life.

Instead of being defensive about the rather intrusive question like she should be, like she'd usually be, Quinn finds herself answering (thoughts of not being real with him fleeing her mind-opportunities to be so being so rare that she finds herself thoughtlessly clinging to it). "My parents want me to date him," she confesses and she knows how it sounds so she defends, "my mom was a cheerleader in high school and my dad was quarterback. They see themselves in me and they…they just want me to give it a chance." Her parents make a lot of suggestions for her life and she usually goes along with them because it's easier. She was surprised when her parents brought up the idea of her going after Finn Hudson- especially since he has a single mom, both of whom they rarely see in church. But they said that they respect the man his father must have been, dying for their country and all, and Finn was quarterback and popular and she should therefore try to be with him- it'd be a perfect match. She was set on not pursuing him and hoping they'd forget about it like they forgot about so many things about her, but then one day she was at the grocery store and she ran into Finn with his mom. He was shopping with her and they were laughing and talking and it all just seemed so _sweet_ and _loving_ and so _not_ like her family. A high school boyfriend lasting forever wasn't an option since she was getting out of Lima, but after that display she started to think that maybe Finn would be really good company while she was still here. And she doesn't want Puck to get the wrong idea about why she's been pursuing his friend so she adds on, "Plus why not date Finn? Sure he's a little…less intelligent than I'd ideally like, but it's not like there are a lot of great prospects in Lima. At least he's nice."

Nice, yeah, that was how everyone always described Finn (and never described him). She's right about this town leaving a person with few options though. He's even been getting tired of the girl's he's seen lately. They all seem the same. "He'll probably ask you out eventually, if you keep flirting with him," he offers because Finn's been his best friend for about a decade and he knows he was pretty excited by the fact that he thought Quinn Fabray may be flirting with him. (He has trouble swallowing his next bite of chicken. He doesn't know why.)

Quinn nods and glances back to her work. She gets two more words translated before her curiosity gets the best of her and she blurts out, "Why haven't you ever hit on me? I know you've gone after every other cheerleader." She sees him smirk and adds hastily, "And that is not an invitation to hit on me now."

"Sure it isn't," Puck says sarcastically with a cocky smirk. He points out, "You're not the only cheerleader I haven't gone after though. I've never hit on Brittney either."

"Why not?" she's quick to ask.

He shrugs and offers, "Something about her, I don't know what, but she kind of reminds me of my sister sometimes and then hitting on her would just be creepy."

She nods understanding and speculates, "Well Brittney's kind off like a kid in ways. Naïve." When he only nods in agreement and fails to get back to her original question, she prompts, "And why not me?"

Looking at her, sometimes he doesn't know why he never at least tired. But seeing the ever-present cross around her neck was an easy reminder. "What are the chances that _something_ would happen between us?" he asks, putting emphasis on something and raising an eyebrow so it was clear what he meant by something. He felt weird about asking her if he'd get all the way in any more blunt a fashion knowing that his baby sister was sleeping in her lap.

"About as good as instead of tossing that gay-kid in the dumpster tomorrow morning like you always do, you make out with him," she's quick to respond. She knew that Puck only got with girls for one reason and figured that was why he never tried to be with her, but she was surprised he was so upfront about his intentions. She didn't see how so many girls went for it if he wasn't promising more. She supposed the girls in her school must be sluttier than she thought.

He laughs and answers, "Zero chance then. And there's no point pursing something when it's guaranteed that it's not going anywhere."

As chastity club president the idea of being so casual about sex is a bit revolting. On the other hand she does see the logic of his decision.

She's saved from any kind of response by Addie bursting through the kitchen door and appearing at the side of the table in seconds. She puts down a plate piled with fruit on it. She looks to Puck and informs him, "I have three sons. I know when a guy lies just to humor me. Eat the fruit." She turns to Quinn and questions with her usual warm smile, "Anything I can get you honey?"

"No thank you," Quinn responds with a smile, "I'm fine."

Addie turns her attention back to Puck. He was reaching for a fry, but under Addie's stare his hand moves over the plate of fruit and he picks up a grape instead. Her no-nonsense stare reminded him of his mom's and it was still free food so he couldn't complain. Eating the grape seemed to satisfy her for her smile returned toward him and she left for the kitchen again, pleased.

He continued to pick at the fruit. After about a minute of silence he looks up from his plate, curiosity getting the best of him. Quinn's returned to her work. He realizes that he doesn't know why she's still here. He's here so he doesn't need her to watch his sister anymore. It's past ten thirty now and despite winning nationals he knows the cheerleaders still have their morning practices. Shouldn't she want to get home and get to bed? He informs her, "You know you don't have to stay."

She looks up and raises an eyebrow at him. "Is that your not so subtle way of telling me to leave?"

He was sort of doing something nice for her, letting her go and all, but God did she have to make being nice so difficult? He retorts, "Do you always take everything the wrong way or is that just right now?"

She sighs and relents because she supposes that he didn't really deserve her being so quick to judge, "Fine. What did you mean?"

He doesn't want to bother anymore despite the fact that she was fairly quick to change her tone. So he waits because ignoring her a little is the very least she deserves. He finishes off about half the plate of fruit (a quarter of it already gone) before he finally responds, "Kel's a heavy sleeper. If you get up it probably won't wake her. You've been here a long time. You don't have to stay."

She'd feel bad for assuming the worst of his words since it turns out he was actually suggesting something sort of nice, but then again he never did or said anything thoughtful (except with Kelyn she assumed) so it's not like she could have known better. He's not eating anymore- probably the first moment food hasn't been in his mouth since he sat down. He's just sitting there and looking at her, awaiting her reaction. She meets his eyes (gets lost there a few seconds she won't acknowledge as existing) and finds herself saying without thinking about it first, "Thanks, but if you don't mind, I'll stay."

"I don't mind," he says so quick that he can't convince himself that it sounded cool at all. But he wants to play it cool because even if she's not a possibility she's still a girl. He shrugs, returns to picking at the fries, and offers, "Do whatever you want. I don't care."

He continues to eat and she returns to studying. This continues for seven more minutes, complete silence between them.

Addie returns from the kitchen, not carrying anything this time, and asks, "You kids still here? Isn't tomorrow a school day? It's almost eleven." She wasn't trying to kick out customers, her only repeats, but she still a mom and it comes first for her.

Quinn glances at her watch and Puck notices her eyes widen at the time. He figures that she had to know that it was getting later and he wonders again why she stayed. He'd like to stay longer just to see how long she stays and to try and figure out why she's still there, but it's getting late and he needs to get his sister home and to bed. He feels like he's letting her off the hook, which he doesn't want to do, but he needs to leave. He agrees with Addie, "Yeah, I should get home."

Addie picks up the baskets and stacks the two plates as she says, "You kids have a good day tomorrow. And it was nice to meet you Puck." As she passes Quinn she adds, "See you soon honey."

Quinn wonders what it would look like if she were to leave now too. She'd barely been able to concentrate on her French work the last few minutes because she realized that Puck was right (much to her annoyance), she didn't have any reason to stay. Sure, she really didn't want to wake Kelyn up, but there was a pretty good chance she wouldn't since Puck carrying her out every night didn't seem to wake her. And she was mortified that Puck may have very wrongfully concluded that she stayed because of him. Which was simply a ludicrous idea. She may not know what possessed her to stay, but it definitely wasn't him. She really shouldn't still be here though, she should be getting home. She knows how it looks, but she supposes she'll have to convince him that this isn't about him by never speaking to him again or something. She closes her notebook and announces, "I didn't realize how late it was. My parents will probably start calling soon if I don't get home."

He stands up and grabs his sister's bags from the floor and slings them over his shoulder.

She stays seated. She doesn't know what she should do. Should she get up first or should he just pick Kelyn up off of her? For some reason she feels stupid for having to ask, which is rare for her, but she doesn't know what to do so she has to ask, "Do you want me to move first or get her first?"

"Probably be easier to get her if you're not there," he decides easily. Really it doesn't make that much difference probably, but it'd be weird to get that close to her he thinks.

A moment later, he finds out that he's right. Proximity between them is foreign and…un-ignorable.

She gets up from the seat carefully and gently guides Kelyn's head back down to the bench softly as she does so. She moves to the other side of the table and begins packing up the books she still has out- the crafts having been packed long ago.

He moves to the other side of the bench and leans over his sister to pick her up. It's this moment that he realizes that she's sleeping the opposite direction than she had been and getting her head onto his shoulder is going to be quite a bit trickier from this angle. He reaches out to get her once, but realizes that what he was thinking isn't going to work. He stands back up, looks at the situation for a few seconds trying to come up with something else.

Right when he realizes what his only option is and leans back over the bench, Quinn leans across the table from her spot standing by her typical side of the table back to the other side where she left her laptop. This puts her stretched across the tabletop a handful of inches away from him leaning over the bench.

He pauses in his action and doesn't notice that she does the same. But they're both far too stubborn and far too good at lying to themselves to acknowledge or indulge the pause.

He grabs his sister's waist and has to lean down and back further to swoop her upwards into his arms so she's in the right position wrapped around him.

Quinn stuffs her laptop back in its case and in her bag and realizes she's packed at the same time he seems to be ready to go. She's committed to the idea of showing him he doesn't matter so she refuses to let the timing deflect her actions. She heads for the door. But even if she was raised to be polite for the wrong reasons, she was still raised to be polite so she pauses at the door and holds it open for him. He's juggling his sister and her things, it's the nice thing to do.

He passes through it without looking at her. He gets two steps out the door, turns around and says evenly, clearly, "Thank you."

She doesn't know if it was the serious tone or the way he lingered just a bit after saying it, but she knows that he wasn't just thanking her for the door. "You're welcome," she says softly with as small smile.

A girl like Quinn Fabray, or really anyone for that matter (he really doesn't accept help well), smiling when they say you're welcome is something that would set him off normally. Because he'd assume that it was a smug smile. Rubbing in that he needed their help. But her smile's not smug. It's something else he can't identify and that his sister has to move in his arms to make him look away from.

He heads for his truck without another word.

She finally passes through the door to the bar and heads for her own car. She considers saying goodnight before he disappears into his truck, but she bites her tongue. As she comes to her car she remembers the last time she was in it and how she had decided that talking with him any more was a bad idea- a bad idea she had already given into far too much tonight. So she gets in her car without saying anything else to him at all.

Before he hears her car door, as he's putting his sister in his truck and catches sight of the new beaded bracelets she's sporting, he considers saying something more to Quinn. Maybe he should tell her that he's probably going to be working next week and could she maybe watch his sister at least one more time? But as he just finishes making sure his sister is secure he hears her car door open and shut and then her car start. He comes around to his driver side as she pulls out of the lot and he supposes it's better this way anyway. He didn't really want to keep getting favors from her.

-o-o-o-

The next day at school everything should be back to normal. Because she's not seeing him in any extra capacity anymore and he's never going to have her doing him any more favors.

Everything does occur as typical. He starts his day by dumping the gay kid in the dumpster with the help of his teammates. She gets exams and papers and assignments back all with A's on them. He goes to the nurse again to catch up on some sleep. She flaunts her social superiority in the cafeteria by kicking some losers out of the table next to them because she knows that if she doesn't regularly remind people of her power they'll forget about it.

The day is technically normal. Only, it doesn't feel that way.

She stands at her locker by herself digging out her book for her last class of the day when Finn passes by. He's not alone, he's walking with Puck next to him. Finn must be catching on to the fact that she's been flirting though or he's just _that_ friendly because he says, "Hi Quinn," as he passes and gives her a wave.

"Hi," she returns and waves back as they continue to pass. Both Finn and Puck glance back at her (though Finn doesn't seem to notice that Puck mimicked his action). It should be Finn's eyes that she meets because she's interested in him, but it's not. She catches Puck's and follows his eyes to the wrist of the hand she waved with. She looks at her wrist as they both turn away and notices what caught his eye- the bracelet his sister made her. She didn't realize she hadn't taken it off and if it caught his attention then she figures he must know who it was from. She takes it off hastily and puts it in her locker before grabbing her book and walking away.

She hates this. There's a part of her that wishes that Puck would just tell everyone the truth about her. She doesn't want to be humiliated, she doesn't want everyone to know that she hangs out at a bar (doesn't matter that it's not one anymore, she knows rumors, that's how it will be), she doesn't want the persona she's worked so hard to achieve to be shattered (even if that persona gets her called names like ice queen, heartless, and bitch behind her back), and she doesn't want word of it getting out and to her parents who would surely take away her car if they found out where she drove it to (and then she'd really be trapped). But she doesn't like people surprising her either. And moments where he looks at her and she's reminded about what he knows about her, she finds herself wishing that he'd turn into the bastard he usually is, be exactly who she expected him to be. She still has her revenge plans in her binder just in case that day comes.

He hates this. But then again he doesn't like anyone helping him ever. His mom always tells this story about when he learned to ride a two-wheeler. Apparently he refused to let anyone teach him how. He fell down twelve times and still refused anyone to give him so much as a word of advice. Despite the fact that he got it on his own eventually, his mom always follows the story by telling him that he's too stubborn and proud for his own good. He hadn't been stubborn or too proud here though. He accepted help and since Kelyn had such a good time he's kind of glad he did. But then again he sees her in the halls and wishes that there wasn't someone out there that knows the truth about him, a truth he's never even told his best friend. He wishes that it wasn't_ her_ that knows. He thinks this would all be easier if it was some ugly girl that knew. If it was an ugly girl then he would have already forgotten her name and would probably forget about her existence completely by the following week. He used to think his brain's ability to remember hot girls was a total perk, but this is one instant (the one and only) where he wishes he didn't have that skill. At least she's bitchy enough that he can probably count on her doing things to make him soon forget that she was ever nice (or at least, that's what he's hoping for).

-o-o-o-

Quinn eats dinner with her parents for the first time all week.

As Quinn picks at her food, her dad says, "Mmm, these pork chops are even better than the pot roast you made last night." He pays the compliment to her mom with a smile, which her mom returns. She knows better than to think any of it is genuine. "Right Quinn?" her dad directs to her, asking her to agree with him about the food.

"I don't know, I wasn't here last night," she responds honestly and not really surprised that they forgot.

Her dad laughs and insists, "Of course you were."

"No, I haven't been here for dinner all week," she maintains evenly and carefully controlling her tone so she doesn't sound as bitter about their forgetfulness as she feels.

Her mom laughs too, like she thinks that Quinn is just trying to joke with her. She acts like she's just playing along when she asks, "Well then where do you think you've been dear?"

"Babysitting," she answers, "Remember? All week. It was set up through the church. Four thirty to ten thirty every day. And I wasn't paid so that it can go on my college applications as volunteer work." It was mostly true and therefore didn't make her feel as guilty as the usual lies she told for when she disappeared.

Her dad's face sobers up as he looks to her mother, her expression similar (the sobering up a miracle given how many scotches they've both had by this time of night). He smiles then and turns to her, "Of course you were honey. We were just kidding."

"We wouldn't forget that we had barely seen our little girl in days. We've missed you sweetie," her mom adds on with that smile that so nearly looks real.

She smiles, mimicking happy far better than her mother does these days, and lies better than both of her parents as she laughs and pretends that they almost pulled one over on her.

She thought she'd stay home tonight, but after dinner and all the pretending she had to keep up for every second of it, she needs to get out. She has to play a role every second she's at school, and every second she's around them, and she just needs a little while where she doesn't have to.

She considers going to the bar. But she'd be alone there and she doesn't particularly feel like that. There's a party in an orchard on the out skirts of town as usual tonight. There are always parties outside in the spring, summer, and early fall. She doesn't enjoy them so much, but it's expected that she go at least sometimes. She decides that tonight will be one of those times because she may not want to pretend anymore, but when everyone's drunk like they always are at these parties eventually, she gets to stop pretending (it's really the best thing about them for her).

-o-o-o-

People never seem to understand that building a fire in an orchard is like insurance that they'll get caught. If you want light, that's what headlights are for. It's with these thoughts that Puck resolves that he won't be able to stay at this party much longer- the fire always brings trouble which means the end of the party.

He's had a couple of beers, but that doesn't mean anything for him (sometimes he thinks the high tolerance is genetic). He hasn't been mingling much and he doesn't really intend to. He came for the free alcohol because it had been a hell of a week and with having to work all weekend it was looking like an even worse weekend. Plus, Finn asked if he was going to be there and it didn't look right if he didn't show for a while at least.

He's leaning against a tree just out of range of the light the fire provides when he looks across the cop-insurance-fire and notices what he considers trouble. She seems to have just arrived and she has her usual Cheerio's at her side. She's laughing and smiling with them about something (in a way that looks distinctively different than yesterday or the day before). He watches her shiver a little despite the fact that it's nearly mid-April, not that cold out, and she's only a few feet from the fire. He watches the way the fire lights her up, makes her glow, and he's glad that he's way over in the dark and she's way over there.

A little while later he still hasn't moved. He's another beer in and a few girls have found him, hit on him, but he's still there slowly drowning his thoughts and waiting for Finn to finally get there, see him there, so he can leave under the guise that everything is still normal.

He's been pretty intent on just leaning there by himself and not caring about anything. But then he sees her look around at the girls she came with, see they're busy chatting up some guys, and quickly fade into the darkness on the opposite side of the fire from him. He stands up right, looks around to make sure that Finn hadn't just shown up, grabs a bottle he had taken by accident when he grabbed his stash, and heads behind the tree he was leaning against. As he makes the venture out into the mature apple orchard, heading in what is basically a giant circle just to get to the area she was headed without getting caught by anyone there, he gives a few seconds thought to what prompted him to follow. He settles on either his curiosity getting the best of him or his love of trouble (which she certainly is at this point) being his motivation for seeking her out.

He finds her pretty easily. The stars may be the only light out here, but it turns out she has a glow about her without the assistance of a fire or low bar lighting. "Hey," he calls, clearly startling her a little though she tries to not let it show.

"Hi," she returns, pausing briefly as he falls into step next to her. She continues walking, having needed a minute to just…breathe.

"Here," he says, holding a bottle out to her.

She notices what it is and informs him, "I don't drink."

"I know," he says surprising her, "I've seen you at these parties before. You stand out. And I don't mean that as good thing." He offers it to her again and adds on, "It's just one of those wine coolers all your cheerleader friends like. They taste like juice and probably won't get you drunk unless you have a bunch and have a really low tolerance. Plus you don't have to drink it, just dump it on trees little by little to make people think you're drinking it. You'll fit in better."

Honestly despite all her power people still look at her at these parties like she's a nark and she knows it's because she doesn't drink like the rest of them. His idea isn't a bad one so she takes the drink and says politely, "Thank you." She takes the twist-top off and dumps a little out of the bottle so she can return to the party looking like she already started drinking it. She's too distracted with the task to notice that he's smiling, pleased with himself, as he watches his feet, walking next to her.

He's alone in the dark with a hot girl. Normally that'd be a good thing, but even if he did have a shot (which he's pretty sure he doesn't despite his ego) he knows she's off limits. To remind himself of that he tells her, "Finn should be here soon. You came to see him right?"

"A little," she lies because she should have realized she could make progress with him by coming, but she was too wrapped up thinking of herself.

He nods and explains, "He got his license yesterday so he was going to drive out here by himself. He was going to be here a while ago, but he had to wait for his mom to get home from work so he could take the car and her shift got extended so he's still waiting."

"Oh," she says and she means to say something else, some other kind of response so awkward silence doesn't settle over them (so she doesn't say something else real to him), but she can't think of anything. A thought on a completely different topic strikes her though. "Where's Kelyn if you're here?" she asks, unable to mask the urgency in her tone.

"My grandma's," he answers, "I drove her out there this afternoon to spend the weekend because I'm working all day tomorrow and Sunday." He doesn't especially like telling her more about his life, but he appreciates that she sounded worried about his sister, which makes it a little easier to answer honestly.

She sighs relieved and says before she thinks about how it sounds (though she wouldn't usually care), "Good. For a second there I thought you may have left her with your mom."

"Like leaving her with my mom would be horrible for her?" Puck's quick to retort. He's always been easily angered and that's no different with her. Based on who she's been this past week he could have assumed she misspoke, given her a chance to take it back. But this is his family and he's not the type of guy to be patient or forgiving anyway.

She thinks she probably would have immediately re-phrased what she said, but when she's attacked, she attacks back. She's had too much practice at it to abandon it now. She responds smartly, "Yes. If your mother is still drinking like you described then it would probably be quite awful for her to be around. Does an alcoholic sound like a good person to watch a nine year old to you?"

"My mom is not an alcoholic," he denies angrily, "she spends a few weeks a year depressed and not too sober, but after what she's been through it's a fucking miracle she's ever okay at all. And she's a great mom every other day of the year, taking care of everything since my dad walked out on her. So don't tell me my mom shouldn't be around my sister when she's got to be way better than your parents since they have you running to the middle of nowhere to spend hours by yourself every day of the week."

"You don't know anything about me," she says warningly and knowing it's a lie as she says it. She would have defended her parents, but that just wasn't in her instincts.

"Ditto," he says just as gruffly as every other word he said to her. He stomps away from her, heading back towards the damn light that's going to get them the cops' attention. He doesn't know why he bothered talking to her in the first place. He should have known better.

She stays in the dark for a few more minutes. Eventually, she texts Brittney and Santana, who she gave a ride to, that her parents were demanding that she be home immediately so they'd have to find another ride back. She drives home alone and stays in her car for a few minutes after parking in her driveway. She goes inside and goes to bed trying not to think of anything at all. (Tonight had been the first time something bad happened while she wasn't pretending, while she was being real. But it wouldn't be the last.)

-o-o-o-

It's Saturday afternoon and she's at the mall with Brittney.

She had nearly forgotten about these plans. Brittney had asked her about going earlier in the week and she agreed easily. Most of her fellow Cheerio's weren't real friends because it's high school and she's at the top of the social ladder and that means that none of them will be real with her, making friendship impossible. But Brittney seems oblivious to nearly everything and treats her like anyone else- inviting her to hang out and do things like her only motivation in asking is to just spend time with her.

She had remembered the plans all week. Besides the fact that she writes everything down, she had been looking forward to it as it was rare that she got to hang out with another girl without said girl having some hidden motivation. But she forgot because she really hadn't been able to think of anything besides her brief encounter with Puck in the orchard. She tried hard to fall asleep and forget about it, but all she could think about was how he was right and how that stung just a bit.

Even if she did think it was a bad idea to leave Kelyn with her mom if her mom had been drinking, she knows she was out of line in voicing that thought. And she should have never suspected Puck of it in the first place. He may be a selfish asshole at school and treat girls he's interested in like crap, but she's seen him be nothing but the best brother and despite the fact that she doesn't trust anyone, she should have trusted that he'd never do anything bad for his sister and she should have kept her mouth shut.

She didn't appreciate his response to what she said, but she understood it. So, since she seemed to have serendipitously ended up at the mall when she knew he was also there, she decided she should stop by and apologize. Plus she also realized that she still had Kelyn's inhaler so as much as she felt like backing out of apologizing like she knew she should, she had to go through with it because it was important that the girl got her medicine back- even if she had yet to need it.

She gets her third sign (first the mall, second the inhaler) that she should go through with her apology when Brittney declares that she's blowing off the Cheerio diet and really wants a Whopper and fries.

She follows Brittney to the food court with her head held high. She's Quinn Fabray and she will complete every challenge that comes before her with grace and poise (if they're what's called for at least). There's only one person working the registers and she tells Brittney she needs to head in the back to talk to someone right before she pays they guy taking orders ten bucks to let her go in the back- since that must be where he's working.

"Hi," she greets meekly when she finds him in front of the fryolater. She keeps her face carefully controlled to look serious despite the natural smirk it has the urge to form at the sight of him in that uniform and in that paper hat.

"Hey," he says shortly, looking at her for only the briefest of seconds before returning his attention to the fries he's cooking. He's surprised she's there, since he has no idea why she would be, but he doesn't plan on letting her know that (or letting it show how uncomfortable he is that someone is seeing him in this Burger King get-up).

She takes a step forward, as if she has all her normal confidence, as she says, "I came to apologize for what I said last night."

"Came all the way here just for that?" he asks, because he doubts it.

"I was already coming here with Brittney today," she confesses because she wants the apology to be genuine so she's not going to lie about the circumstances. He nods and she continues, taking another confident seeming step forward, "I didn't mean to imply anything about your mom and it wasn't my place to anyway. And I'm sorry for everything I said. You just….made me mad. Which is no excuse."

"It's cool," he says cutting her off and glancing up at her- something he intends to be brief, but isn't. He's not used to people apologizing to him and it turns out he doesn't really like it either. She's apologizing for the wrong things she said and it makes guilt nag at him over the things he said that he knew were a bit too far despite the fact that he was sure she deserved it at the time. She apologized though and that means that she doesn't really deserve him being an ass or having been an ass anymore. And he gets getting caught up in a fight, happens to him pretty often and despite what she said about it not being an excuse, he's used it as excuse plenty of times. He finally turns his attention back to the batches of fries he's supposed to be cooking and offers, "Probably shouldn't have said everything I did either." (He doesn't just mean about her parents, but he doesn't think he should have mentioned his own family any more either. He never liked her knowing about them in the first place so he hates that he was the one to tell her just a little bit more.)

"Probably not," she says so quiet it's almost like she doesn't mean for him to hear, "but you were right."

He looks to her again then, but she looks away from him immediately and for the first time since she got there. He can't see her eyes, with them downcast and her face turned slightly to the side like it is, but he thinks he knows what he'd find there anyway. He's not so comfortable with vulnerability so he supposes it's a good thing she's trying to hide it.

She distracts him from these thoughts when she starts digging in her purse and pulls out what he recognizes as the inhaler he gave her. She holds it out to him and won't meet his eyes as she does so. She still won't look up when she says, "Here. I realized I still had Kelyn's inhaler. I should have remembered to give it back Thursday just in case she needed it yesterday or this weekend."

He stares at it in her hand for a second and really thinks. This morning when his manager was there he got himself the same hours for next week that he had this week. He supposes he'll still need them since he hasn't seen his mom since Thursday morning so life isn't back to normal yet. And Kelyn was already asking about when she could see Quinn again and his grandma's house is pretty far. "I have a lot of those," he tells her so she doesn't feel bad that she didn't immediately return it. "You could…hang on to it," he offers looking back to the food he's cooking, trying to make it sound like a casual thing when he's given it a lot more thought he does most things. He glances at her and see's her eyes are wider than they usually are and stumbles through his explanation, "Uh, I'm working the same hours next week and Kelyn…likes hanging out with you so if you, maybe, wanted to watch her for a little while sometime next week…I know she'd like that."

She smiles. She doesn't need to think about it, she knows her decision and she doesn't really care what her motivation is for making it anymore. "I would too," she says as she takes the proffered inhaler back. She adds, looking away and trying to make it sound like it's not a big deal or anything, "I could watch her all week again. If you'd like. After all, I kind of owe you after I was unnecessarily bitchy."

He laughs and teases, "Didn't know you use words like that Jesus Freak." He continues, "I don't know if I should let my sister be around someone who uses words like those."

"Like she hasn't heard worse coming from your mouth. With your lack of vocabulary I bet you don't get through a day without using profanity," she volley's back.

The bantering was the first time they were both looking at each other at the same time for more than a handful of seconds since she got there. And it wasn't mean-spirited, just a lot more fun than either one of them expected to be able to have with the other.

He stops laughing, but he's still smirking when he agrees, "Yeah, I guess it would be good if you watched her again."

"Good," she responds, still smiling.

"Yeah," he says, though he's not sure why.

Silence begins to settle with him still smirking and her still smiling and both of them still staring at the other.

Rather than either one of them having to think of something to fill the void, Brittney quickly bounces back and slides right up to Puck, stealing his hat and putting it on herself as she says, "Puck! Oh, cool hat!"

"Brit, what are you doing back here?" Quinn questions, hoping it's clear that she didn't mean for Brittney to follow her because she doesn't think Puck's going to be too crazy about getting caught here by someone else.

Her eyes light up as she rambles, "Jerry let me back. You know, that guy up front? Doesn't he look like one of those things that was on the cover of that book we were supposed to read in English last year?"

"A hobbit?' Quinn questions, remembering their books from the previous year easily since she actually read them.

"Yeah!" Brittney agrees excitedly, "So adorable! And we were talking and I mentioned how I'm craving a Whopper and he said he'd get me a free one, just come on back. But I want fries too so I went looking for them."

Puck scoops up some of the fries he just finished off and puts them in a container and hands them to her. "They're on the house," he says because he figures the hobbit looking guy was probably giving her stuff free to flirt with her, might as well keep it up for the guy, he's got nothing else going for him.

"Cool!" Brittney exclaims before skipping off.

Puck plucks his hat off of her head as she leaves because he can't lose pieces of the uniform and calls after her, "If you want a hat, there are crowns under the counter."

"Awesome," she says spinning back around and adds to Quinn, "See, I told you the food court would be fun."

Silence begins to settle between them again, but that has a pretty good chance of turning awkward again so he says sarcastically, "You didn't think the food court would be fun? How insane of you."

"I know," she agrees in the same tone. But she wants to make it clear that she didn't slip up by stopping by when she was with Brittney. She's Quinn Fabray and she doesn't make mistakes like that. As he gets back to dumping more fries in the fryer, she offers, "Don't worry about Brittney though. She won't tell anyone she saw you here. She keeps secrets pretty well."

"Really?" he questions doubtfully because honestly he wasn't so sure Brittney had the mental capacity to understand the word "secret."

"Yes," she maintains and points out, "Have you heard about her bird?"

"No," he responds honestly having no idea what she's talking about.

"Well that's just one secret she's managed to keep," she concludes.

"If you say so," he agrees because at this point there's not much he can do about it if she's wrong.

She unconsciously starts playing with the bracelet on her wrist. She had put it in her locker the previous day, but as she sat in class without it she realized that her decision to take it off was Puck-induced and she wasn't going to let what he possibly thought effect what she did because it wasn't like he mattered.

As he looks back up at her he catches what she's playing with, catches her eyes as she realizes what she's doing and while he wonders for what must be the hundredth time now why she's helping him, why she's been nice to him when he knows she's not that way to anyone else.

"I should go," she announces and feels graceless doing so. In an attempt to shake off the clumsy feeling, she adds on as she takes a few steps backwards (without managing to run into anything), "See you Monday."

"Yeah," he agrees, "Monday." He intends to pull a batch of fries up out of the oil, but she offers him a small smile before she turns around and he forgets what he's doing for a second. Only when her back is facing him and she's walking away does he make it back to his task.

(Here's something you should know: they really didn't say a whole lot to each other all week- though it was still enough to result in regretful words and a bit of hurt. And later there will be times where they'll talk even less- not at all-but they'll wish that they could at least say as little as they did this week.)

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**A/N: I hope you enjoyed the chapter. **

**Remember that feedback is love so if you get the chance Please Review!**

**Chapter 2 title**_**: **__And I feel the light in your eyes, and it's calling me to stay just a little bit longer. _It's from Neil Diamond's song "Save Me." And no, there won't be an abundance of Neil Diamond lyrics referenced. It's just a weird coincidence that I ended up using two and that they come early on in the overall story.

**Thanks for reading!**


	3. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Ugh. I feel like banging my head against my desk. Which actually (surprisingly) has nothing to do with this story. So far, when I actually get time to write, it's going smoothly and generally the way I want it to. But I hate one of my professors (which is something I don't say lightly as I never hate anyone) and I had a crappy week with one that will be decidedly worse coming up. To top it off this weekend hasn't been good either because it's been filled with confusing and horribly boring school work and nothing else. Really, I have no idea how I found time to write this super long chapter and start on the next one. But yay! at least this went well and the chapter was somehow miraculously finished.

In other news, with that whole Glee promo for the return I figured some of you may be wondering if this story will be finished by then. The answer: there's absolutely zero chance of that happening. There's about six chapters before I catch up to where the season has currently left off (six chapters that may get progressively shorter in length--- good news for those of you that are irked by these long ones). I do hope to get to the Quinn-and-Puck-create-baby moment before the April return though, which is about two chapters away (ish).

**Again, thank you to all the wonderful people who reviewed! **

**Okay, I think that's all I intended to mention. I'll shut up now and let everyone get on to the chapter. Happy reading!

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**Cheated Hearts

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II. _And I feel the light in your eyes, and it's calling me to stay just a little bit longer_

(Here's something you should know: Her Sunday feels like it passes unbearably slowly, because all she really wants is for it to be Monday already. As usual, it has a little to do with wanting to escape her parents again. But it also has a lot to do with him.)

**Monday:**

By Monday Quinn is already very comfortably back in denial---not that she'll acknowledge her state as such. Maybe during those few minutes at the Burger King on Saturday she was a little more honest than she intended (a little more honest than she ever is with anyone). And maybe the words that slipped had genuinely surprised her, not because of their content but the lack of momentary self-control they represented. But she got two very good nights of sleep and went to church and she was confident that she would never have one of those "lapses" again, especially not with Puck.

She goes to Foster's half an hour early though she doesn't have any real reason to (except the nerves that have been nagging at her all day). When she walks in Foster isn't there, but that's not especially unusual when the place is completely empty so she heads back to her usual table unconcerned. She takes out her books and sets them up as usual. She takes out the things she brought as activities for Kelyn- a deck of cards and a puzzle. With that, she's completely ready for Kelyn to arrive. Yet, it also took her less than a minute to do all that and she still has about thirty minutes to wait. She's left with nothing to do but start her homework (which doesn't seem like enough of a distraction to ease her jitters).

She hears a door open and close and since she can see the hallway that leads to the bathrooms, the side door to the kitchen, and the entrance and no one has come through them, she figures it must be Foster coming through the door on the other end of the bar- which she honestly has no idea where it leads to or from. It would be rude if she didn't go and say hello though (and it could be a distraction). She heads over to the bar and greets, "Hi Foster." She'd always been taught to call adults "Mister and Missus" but Foster would never tell her his last name, always insisting that it's just Foster. Thanks to google she had learned it, but as strange as it had initially been to do something so against habit, she used his first name comfortably now.

"Quinn," he greets with a smile. "Usual?" he questions grabbing a glass. She nods and smiles back as he asks, "So how was your weekend?"

"Pretty typical," she answers simply and returns politely, "How was yours?"

He finishes filling the glass with diet coke and hands it off to her as he answers, "Can't complain." He's about to step away to go do something when he stops himself, remembering, "Oh, actually it was pretty good. Addie and me found out we're going to be great grand parents."

"Great grand parents?" she questions stunned, "That can't be possible."

"Oh yeah it is. Our oldest son, John, his oldest son and his wife found out she's pregnant about a week ago," Foster explained, not catching why Quinn was surprised.

Sure they're older, but Quinn can't believe that they have at least one grandchild old enough to be married. She comments, "You grandson must be awful young to be married and having a child. I mean, you and Addie don't seem old enough to have adult grandkids."

"Nah, they're not getting started that young. And neither did our son," Foster denies, "But I'm old enough to have them, Addie isn't."

She smiles because they may be a little confrontational sometimes with each other, but they're really sweet too. She inquires, "Where's Addie anyway?"

He checks the clock on the wall and responds, "Oh, it's still four so she's at home watching _Oprah_. That's why she's never here at four, can't miss her Oprah. She loves that show. I even took her to see it once, for our fortieth anniversary. I wasn't impressed though. Don't understand what she sees in it."

"Fortieth?" Quinn questions again stunned, "How long have you been married?"

Foster's scraggly gray eyebrows furrow for a minute as he does the math in his head and concludes, "Just celebrated anniversary number fifty-two not too long ago."

Fifty-two? But she thought that they were in their sixties, which is now impossible given the age one has to be to get married. Sure she saw their wedding picture- they had pictures up of themselves, their family, the bar, patrons of the bar, all over the walls of the place- and they looked pretty young, but she didn't think they were _that_ young.

"Doing some math now yourself?" Foster questions knowingly. He'd been married fifty-two years, he'd had this conversation many times. Quinn looks a little guilty for being surprised, but it's not like she's the first one. Rather than say more though, he tells her, "It surprises most people, but I'll have Addie tell you the story some time. She likes telling it, tells everyone." He adds on, "I could call her right after _Oprah_ and she could tell you then."

Quinn shakes the surprise from her thoughts and realizes _Oprah_ ends at five and Kelyn will be here by then. She doesn't want to be insulting, but when she's left with Kelyn, she's responsible for her and she doesn't want to overlook something important out of niceties. She asks, "It's something appropriate for Kelyn to hear too right? I mean, nothing really sad about it that could upset a nine-year-old?"

"Kelyn's coming back?" Foster questions surprised. He offers, "I thought with the way everyone was acting last Thursday, that arrangement was over." When Quinn doesn't respond, instead biting her lip looking like she's thinking of what to say, he speculates further, "I guess your weekend must have been a little more interesting than you let on."

She sighs then. His implications are annoying, but she knows better than to let her agitation show because then it'd mean she cares, which she doesn't. She defends, "I did think last Thursday would be the last day I watched her, but their mom is still…unavailable and Puck has to work every night again this week."

"So you offered to watch Kelyn again?" Foster questions.

"He asked," she informs him and adds honestly, "and I offered."

Foster starts to smile, one of those he-knows-something smiles, but she knows what he's thinking- this isn't the first time he's alluded to something like this- and she's tired of it because he's wrong. "It's nothing," she maintains, "I get my volunteer hours for college and he gets a free babysitter."

"Uh huh," he says doubtfully. He decides to start the task he came back out here for- wiping down the bar from the mess the whole five people who came there for lunch left. He says, changing tactics, "Puck seems like a good kid though- and not just because he liked our chicken. Stepping up and taking care of his family like he is, growing up sooner than he should have to, he's a good guy." He glances at Quinn out of the corner of his eye, curious to see how she responds. But she just continues to sit there, sip her soda, eyes downcast not really focused on anything. Yeah, Addie's told him a lot of times that he's not good at this.

A minute later Quinn changes the topic back to his kids and grandkids. By the time five rolls around and it's safe to call Addie, he tells her to come over, but can't remember the reason he wanted her there other than to see Quinn and Kelyn. Damn getting older.

-o-o-o-

When Puck picked Kelyn up from their grandma's Sunday night and told her she'd be watched by Quinn again during the week, she declared that he was the best brother for letting her spend more time with Quinn- who she still thought was _so_ _cool_. He hated accepting Quinn's help again, but his sister thinking the world of him for it, that he can definitely live with.

This arrangement also seems to be working out better than he thought possible for the fact that when Kelyn came bouncing to his truck when he picked her up from school, eager to go see Quinn, she came with two tests scored- both A's. It was a history quiz and spelling test from the previous week and she said Quinn had helped her with both. She didn't often get A's on anything and never on spelling tests, so Puck knew that Quinn really must have helped his sister study well somehow. So Puck drives him and his sister out to Foster's knowing that his sister would be very well taken care of and a little more comfortable with the whole arrangement then he was last week.

He enters the place a bit after his sister. She had raced out as soon as he brought the truck to a stop and he had to dig her things out of the back before going after her. When he walks in he's surprised to find that they're both right there. It seemed as though Quinn had been at the end of the bar, drinking a soda and talking to Foster. And her and Kelyn were just finishing up their handshake thing.

His attention is drawn away from the two girls pretty quickly though as Foster calls, "Hi Puck. It's good to see you two back here."

"Yeah," Puck agrees distractedly as Kelyn skips off toward their usual table and Quinn hurries behind her realizing that she left all activities out and left none to be a surprise. But all he sees is the two of them rush off and he's left standing there. He remembers Foster just said something to him though and the guy has been pretty hospitable so he should do…something because of that. He tries to turn his attention back to the man fully (doesn't really succeed). His mom did teach him about manners and even though he normally chooses to ignore those lessons, he knows now is a perfect time to use them. "Thanks for letting us do this here," he says. When Foster doesn't react immediately he wonders if it's clear what he's saying so he elaborates, "You know, for letting Quinn watch Kel here. I know it's not what this place is meant for…so thanks." (Quinn's name still feels awkward in his mouth. He thought that would have passed by now.)

"Eh, it's no trouble," Foster waves off. "We like having you kids around," he adds, "Kelyn's a good kid. You all are."

"Thanks," Puck says again, feeling like it's all he's been saying these days (kind of hating that it's so called for). He's distracted from these thoughts though and from everything all together since it's a surprise when he suddenly feels small arms hugging his waist. He hadn't seen Kelyn run back over, but here she is hugging him goodbye.

He hugs her back and he hears her mumble against the fabric of his jacket, "Bye egghead."

"Bye buba," he responds dutifully, realizing that saying goodbye to her is another thing he always seems to be saying lately (and hating that it's so called for too).

She release him and smiles up at him for a second before grabbing her bags from him and running back to the table where Quinn is waiting for her.

It takes him a minute to remember what he was doing before his sister said goodbye to him and when he does he finds Foster towards the other end of the bar on the phone. He hadn't even heard it ring. Foster waves to him with a smile, and he realizes the time and how he should be going. He waves back and he's going to leave, but as he turns back towards the door he notices Quinn sitting in her usual spot. She's smiling at something his sister is telling her and he catches her eye. He waves, not really knowing why he's doing it as he's doing it. She waves back. (When her attention clearly turns back to his sister, he still lingers- just long enough to nearly make him late for work and wondering what had been his delay.)

-o-o-o-

After homework time and playing cards with Addie (and for a bit while he was free, Foster) and eating dinner and completing the puzzle she brought, Kelyn falls asleep as usual. Usually when this happens Quinn returns to her own homework or to recreational reading. However, tonight she has another thing on her mind. She takes out a fresh piece of paper and begins to make a list of appropriate (safe) talking topics.

She had realized somewhere in the middle of the third round of go-fish that her and Puck had not exchanged a single word. While she still believed it was for the best if they didn't learn any more about each other and she still believed it was possible to have the same walls up with him she did with everyone else despite the truths he knew about her, she also realized that not talking had implications she wasn't comfortable with either. If she didn't talk to him it could show that she _couldn't_ talk to him- thus giving him an importance that he definitely didn't have.

So she makes a list of things she can talk about with him that don't (can't) mean anything. She writes down things that she thinks she would possibly talk to him about prior to their new situation had they ended up in a conversation with each other. And she knows that their opportunity to talk will be limited if tonight goes anything like any other night, but she's committed to going through with it anyway.

In the time after creating her list of talking topics and before he gets there, she tries to return to her homework. Considering that she glances up toward the door every twenty seconds she doesn't get much done.

When he does finally walk through the door at his usual time, her leg begins to jiggle under the table. She quickly ceases it though and writes it off as some odd spasm with completely random timing.

He shuffles over to the table and she promptly opens her mouth to say something as soon as he gets there (say what exactly she's not sure, it flew out of her mind). But she's interrupted.

"Puck," Foster calls from behind the bar in a hushed tone because he knows Kelyn is sleeping. He waves him over and Puck turns around and heads for him without glancing back.

It's quiet. There's only one other person in there, a guy eating at the bar. So she can hear the conversation.

"Addie's in the back finishing up making you dinner. Do you want it for here or to go since it's late?" Foster asks.

"Uh, to go," Puck stumbles because that's about the last thing he was expecting. He reaches for his wallet in his back pocket as he asks, "How much?"

"Nah," Foster waves him off, "it's on us. We wouldn't give you dinner and then expect you to pay for it."

It's charity, clearly. And Puck still hates charity. He asks, though he does it as nicely as possible since the guy's offering him free food which is the best thing ever, "Isn't that bad for business?"

Foster chuckles, deep and hearty, "If we really needed business don't you think we'd be doing everything possible to get people in here?" He smiles, nostalgic, and explains, "I've had this bar thirty eight years, and it's been a good thirty eight. Those last years with our liquor license when we were serving minors were really profitable. Me and Addie, we're fine. Don't have tons of money, but we don't have much to spend on anyway. We could just retire, sell this place if we want, but it's home and what'd we do with our time anyway?" He adds, "And besides, doing good by people tends to leave them with a good memory of us. Now you can go on and spread the word about how 'happening' this place is."

Puck laughs dutifully with Foster and returns, "For sure." The guy had been good to him and he'd actually have no problem doing something nice in return. But he needs this place to be empty, at least for the rest of the week, so his sister still gets watched in a nice, safe environment. So he knows he's not going to follow through anymore.

"Geez," Foster exclaim glancing at the clock, "Addie said she'd be done with your food in a minute. It's been about ten since she told me that. Woman takes forever on anything. I'll go check on her for you so you can get your sister home." Foster's heading back to the kitchen before Puck can tell him that it's cool. It's free food he'll take it whenever, no rush.

With Foster gone and apparently not coming back right away, he's got no reason to stand by the bar doing absolutely nothing.

He heads back to the table and goes right for grabbing his sister's bags and he's surprised when Quinn talks to him. Not that he thought she wouldn't talk to him, but he'd really been too tired to think about her at all.

"I had to listen to Santana complain about you for hours today," Quinn says. Santana is a connection they've had for a long time so she figures she's a safe bet for a topic. Plus it really did get on her nerves all day. Not necessarily anymore than Santana can typically get on her nerves (the girl was so clearly jealous of her), but still, it was annoying.

"What?" he questions because he could probably try to remember his last interaction with Santana to have an idea of what she's talking about, but it's not really worth the effort at this point.

She sighs agitatedly and explains, "Apparently you were a jerk the last time you talked to her. Normally I think she's a little over dramatic with these things, but she said that she asked you if you wanted to hang out with her after school some time this week and that you told her, "Nah, I'll pass," which I'd have to agree was unnecessarily rude."

Judgmental, yeah, that fits the Quinn Fabray he's familiar with and not this weird version who's a real person he's been around lately (thinking about constantly no matter how much he fights it). He retorts, "I actually said, "Nah, I'll pass. Been there, done that." But I guess telling you that last bit could get her kicked out of your precious celibacy club so she left it out. Though if you haven't figured out that Santana doesn't have relationships, she has sex, then you're really not as smart as you're always pretending to be. And what was wrong with me saying that to her anyway? It's true. And even if I didn't feel like not going through another crappy 'relationship' with her, I'm too busy right now to anyway. So why not just blow her off so she leaves me alone and doesn't take up any more of my time?"

There's a slight thrill that runs through her the second he starts to make valid points. She's not sure what it is, but something about arguing with him is much more enjoyable than it is with most people. Not that she doesn't always enjoy winning an argument, but somehow going back and forth with him is better. A confident smirk slides on her features as she begins calmly, thoughtfully responding, "First of all, I'm not 'pretending' to be smart, I am. And of course I've noticed Santana's whorish behavior. Did you really think all of those unsavory rumors about her spread themselves?" His eyebrows shoot up, but not like he's really surprised, more impressed. She loses her thought for a second, stumbling, "And second... I don't care about whether or not what you say to her is true or why you said it or whether or not you want her anymore. I'm just saying that you shouldn't do it rudely because then I have to hear her complain and it ruins _my_ day."

"So if you're so smart, then what should I have told her instead?" he challenges.

"Well," she considers, "I'd say you should have told her that you already had a girl for this week, but I don't think anyone would believe you to be faithful. You could have told her that you're just busy this week after school, but maybe some other time – and hope that, if you still don't want her, she simply forgets and finds someone else. But the most believable thing you could have said was that you're having a herpes flare up so this week isn't good for you unless she'd like to get it too."

He laughs. He'd be insulted because she's kind of calling him a slut, but on the other hand if any girl thinks he has the potential to have an STD then that means that his reputation as a stud must proceed him (right?). He knows she meant it as an insult, but he just can't take it that way. He offers, "That's not a bad idea. Next time."

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head disapprovingly as she says dryly, "Of course _you'd_ like that idea."

"You're the one who suggested it," he points out with a shrug.

"As an implication that you're a man-whore and that that is a bad thing," she retorts.

"Being a stud is only a bad thing to someone like you Virgin Mary," he argues easily.

"A stud is an animal, which only serves one purpose- to procreate, which isn't what you're doing- although I'm sure the animal part is your correct species," she volleys.

He leans toward her, bending over the table, invading her space as he says with his usual confident smirk, "Yeah, I'm part animal. And I bet you're dying to find out which part."

She…laughs. Hard. Maybe him being that close unsettled her for just a second, but it quickly went away with his words. Other girls seriously go for stuff like that? It's just too…stupid.

He backs off. He's had lots of responses to his "charm" (mostly positive, for sure), even some so bad they involve physical harm being brought on him. But never this.

She keeps laughing because it's probably the funniest thing she's seen in while. Plus his face once she started laughing- priceless, made her laugh more. She pulls herself together, but it only lasts a second before she bursts out again.

He doesn't know what to do. This is completely foreign territory. (She's got a good laugh though-even if it is directed _at_ him.) Luckily, he get's a momentary distraction because he notices his sister shift slightly from the corner of his eye and he warns, "Shh. You'll wake her up."

The idea of waking up Kelyn sobers Quinn up pretty quickly. Still smiling because she can't help it, she declares, "That had to be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard."

"Worked on all your friends," he points out with a smug smirk, fronting like her reaction didn't affect him at all.

She raises an eyebrow and retorts, "You mean the drones that do whatever I say because none of them have a mind of their own?" She adds sarcastically, "What an accomplishment."

"It is," he insists, because working in all those girls and football and baseball and his family- that took commitment.

She's about to argue that easy girls don't equal an accomplishment- it violates the very definition- but the kitchen door comes swinging open and Addie comes out with a bag as she calls, "Your food's done honey." She strolls over and adds, "Do you want me to carry it out for you?"

It takes him a second to realize why she was asking if he wanted help carrying a paper bag of food that couldn't possibly be very heavy. But looking down at the booth he remembered his sister, who he had to carry. He grabs the bags from the floor as he answers, "Sure, thanks." He grabs his sister next, easily swinging her into position. He almost begins to head out, but it was just a second ago that he was talking to her, having a pretty normal conversation, and it feels weird to just leave this time. "See you tomorrow," he says with nod before promptly heading for the door. He figures, he's just stating a fact, nothing can be read into it.

"Goodnight," she responds as he's already heading out, because it's polite to respond. Plus he wasn't usually as polite to use any kind of niceties at all and she figures that by responding she's encouraging that positive behavior (though this conclusion takes her two sleepless hours in bed to get to that night, and she'll conveniently forget that part).

Two minutes later, as she's packing up her things (slowly as usual to make sure he can't catch her headlights in his rearview mirror), Addie comes back in and right for her.

"Oh that boy," she exclaims. She laughs and confides after looking over her shoulder to make sure Foster hadn't suddenly appeared in the room as she crossed it, "I got him to give me a hug. Well…more like I refused to let him leave without one, but still. Oh he is so what I would have gone for when I was your age. You should snap him up before someone else does honey."

She doesn't really want to ruin the good image these people have of Puck because _they're_ really good people and _they_ deserve to get to believe that he is too. But they hinted last week and they've been laying it on thicker so far this week and it's only the first day. And she's been the ice queen before, why not just be her a bit here to avoid this nagging? She responds, "Oh everyone else has had him. Everyone still does really." To Addie's confused look she simplifies, "He's a player- been with just about every attractive girl at our school."

Understanding passes over Addie's features, but then she waves it off and says, "Of course he has. He's a high school boy who's extremely attractive."

Feeling that Addie may begin to try and sway her again, Quinn interjects, "Besides I've really liked his best friend for a while now and I think he may ask me out soon. He's the sweetest guy. He's the quarterback and he has a good relationship with his mother and he's Christian like me. He's perfect."

"That's great. I'm sure he'll ask you out soon. How could he not?" Addie offers. But she's lived quite a lot in all her years and she's pretty good at reading people, even the ones who don't want to be read. She hears the tone, the phrasing, and how it sounds just a bit too much like it's not just convincing for her benefit. She adds, "But you know, perfect doesn't mean right. I don't want to see you get hurt if it doesn't work, so keep that in mind- perfect on paper doesn't always mean anything." She pats Quinn on the shoulder and offers, "I'm going to go get Fos to walk you out. You have a nice night sweetheart. I'll see you tomorrow."

When Foster comes back out of the kitchen a minute later, Quinn's still sitting in the exact same position, unmoved. Addie had unknowingly touched on one of her fears. Over the years, Quinn had talked herself into a lot of things. She talked herself into a true faith in Christianity to spite her parent's fake one. She talked herself into being a bitch at school and foregoing real friends to maintain the level of popularity her parents thought appropriate. She had and she could talk herself into a lot of things and she worried about possibly someday talking herself into loving someone she didn't. If the guy was perfect on paper, if he fit exactly what she thought she wanted, then she knows that she could probably convince herself that she loves the guy. And if that happens then she'll end up just like her mother---trapped in a marriage with a man she doesn't really love, but constantly pretending to and constantly in denial about every truth in her life.

She knows that Finn is not a guy she could do that with- talk herself into loving. Finn's a good guy, but she lied when she said he was perfect. Her ideal guy has far more religious faith, is much more intelligent, and has absolutely no connection to Lima. He's not perfect on paper so she knows Finn won't be the guy that helps her turn into her mother. But the idea that she could still so easily become her sticks with her, distracts her the whole drive home, and follows her into her house and up to her bedroom.

Resolved to forget about her mother and the life that she refuses to let happen to her, she gets in bed trying to wipe her mind of all thought.

(Five minutes of effort to think of nothing later, her mind strays to Puck and stays stuck there for a while. But in the morning all she'll think about is her mother and their possible similarities, and how much she still wants to forget it all.)

-o-o-o-

**Tuesday:**

When Puck returned to Foster's to pick up his sister as usual Tuesday night, he had no idea what would await him.

He'd dropped Kelyn off without any incidents or real interactions with Quinn. He had quickly headed off to work as usual. Since the first day he had left his sister with Quinn, he hadn't thought about all the information she could pass along that he wouldn't want her to. So when he's at work today, just as has become usual, the idea of what he could be walking into, what he _is_ walking into, doesn't even occur to him.

He makes it worse without even knowing it. Addie sticks her head out of the kitchen, holding a plate of food in her hand, just as he's passing by to get to the booth and she wants to know if he'd like his food boxed again. He's starving and the plate of pot roast smells so damn good the idea of waiting to eat sounds impossible. So he takes the plate and keeps heading to the table. Given that one side is occupied by his sister- all spread out and sleeping- and the other is occupied by Quinn, he pulls up a chair and sits at the end of the table only offering a simple, "Hey," in greeting before he digs into his food.

And then, it comes.

"So, you watch _Gossip Girl_," Quinn says and even though he's not looking at her he knows she's smirking, can hear it in her voice.

She says it as a statement, not a question, and he knows that his sister was surely to blame (though, now that he thinks about it, he completely forgot to tell her that some topics were off limits for her to talk about with Quinn---whoops). He continues to shovel food in his mouth, careful not to react too much because this one's not even that bad since he has a good explanation. He responds through the mass of beef in his mouth and with a shrug, "I stop at anything with hot girls in it. That one's got me a few times because of that. The girls in it aren't hot enough to put up with those overly-dramatic, stupid storylines though."

"Yeah, Kelyn said you change the channel pretty quick, usually just as she's catching on to what's happening," Quinn agrees easily because that was so not the best thing she heard today. She thought the highlight of the day would be playing Monopoly with Kelyn, but Kelyn seemed to feel like sharing today and what she was sharing was really good. She adds casually, "Which is totally different from how you are when a re-run of _ER_ is on. She says you won't let her talk and frequently order her out of the room whenever you find an episode on, which you always stop and watch." Though a topic like this absolutely didn't make her list of appropriate things to talk to him about, she was enjoying it. As far as she was concerned she was just being herself- using embarrassing information against someone was possibly her oldest past time. She smirks further and mocks as she admonishes, "You know it isn't very nice to treat your sister like that just so you can watch John Stamos without interruption."

He's screwed and he knows it. Puck sighs- though it comes out more like a little growl. He keeps eating as he still tries to play the whole thing down, "Actually, I prefer the earlier seasons."

"Like when George Clooney was on?" she questions, real smart-ass like.

"Yeah," he agrees tightly as he continues to work on his food.

"Kelyn made it sound like you're such a big fan," Quinn continues to antagonize purposely, "What would you do if George Clooney walked in here right now? Would you ask for his autograph? Would you tell him how much you loved him on the show?"

"Nope," he denies as he takes his sister's water and takes a long drink from it. He puts it back down and instead of returning his attention to his food like he has been all night, he pauses and explains, "If George Clooney, or any other actor for that matter, came in here right now, I'd decide who looks more like him, me or my sister, and then try to convince him that who ever wins that contest is his illegitimate kid and we'll never mention that to anyone for a quick on the spot payoff. Because really, why get an autograph when you can get some cash?"

She nods, it's an idea that wouldn't likely pan out, but then again it's about an unlikely situation in the first place. She points out, "Sure, but an autograph can get you money too---ebay."

"Yeah, but nothing needs to be authentic for that. I could do that right now, just need a pen," he slurs through a mouthful of food, having returned to it.

She's about to ask him more about his apparent love of _ER_, but she stops herself. She realizes that she doesn't know the point of this. Sure, embarrassing someone when given the opportunity was second nature to her (purposefully instilled in her years ago by her parents), but there's no one here to make this really embarrassing for him. And she can't tell anyone because then she may have to answer the question about how she found out. And no one can find out that she spends her afternoons and nights escaping to Foster's. (And no one can know that she has suddenly become so irreversibly involved in his life.)

(It's ten thirty at night on a Tuesday and he's sitting less than two feet from her. She can see the dark circles under his eyes, the weight of the world on his shoulders, and the uncertainty in his eyes. And it suddenly doesn't feel right to do any of the things she's been taught to.)

But Kelyn shared a wealth of information and she can't just walk away from all this--- she knows how that would look, what it'd imply. So she changes tactics to something that she believes will be a softer blow. "And _Titanic_," she says getting his attention, "I bet I can guess what scene of that got your attention."

He's surprised by not only the topic change, but by how the new one was approached as well. He figured she'd go after the _ER_ thing more. It's what he would have done. But he figures maybe she's not familiar enough with it to have any more material and he should just be grateful for that and count himself lucky. So he goes along with it, honestly answering, "Yep. And I thought a movie with full-frontal nudity would be a lot better."

"You didn't like it?" she questions quickly.

On the very rare occasion someone finds out that he's seen it, that's usually the response he gets. "Nope," he says honestly as he finishes cleaning his plate. He looks up at her after his last bite because he realizes that she hadn't responded. He sighs and he figures he knows why she hasn't said anything- it's _Titanic_, he's gotten this before. "I don't know why most people like that crap. Guess you're one of those people though, huh?" he asks, figuring that she found it unfathomable that someone wouldn't like that movie since it seemed like everyone- men and women alike- did and he was some kind of weird exception.

"No, I'm not," she responds. Still surprised by it herself, she offers, "I didn't like the movie and I can't believe you didn't either because that means we have something in common."

He nods, because he agrees that it's weird that they'd have anything in common. He states, "That makes two things." He watches as her brows furrow and he answers before she asks, "Not liking _Titanic_ and going to the same school."

She nods a little and asks, "Why didn't you like it?" She fully expects him to have a completely different reason for disliking it than her.

"Didn't buy that that guy loved that girl," he answers honestly.

Crap. They had the same reason for not liking it. But that couldn't truly be possible. So, she questions further, "Why not?"

He spots a basket of bread on the table and plucks a couple of rolls from it before he explains through continued mouthfuls of food, "He seemed pretty willing to die to me. I mean, there had to be other crap to float on in the ocean and there definitely was in the shot and he just took the easy way out. That girl must have been insanely clingy or he must have been really stupid to think that the only way out was dying. Either way I could believe that more for the characters than them loving each other."

Quinn doesn't react. She simply sits looking at the same point behind him that she did while he was talking (it felt…not like nothing to be looking at him).

He notices that she's not immediately letting him know what she thought about what he said and he doesn't think much of it. But he prompts, "So why didn't you like the movie?"

"Same reason," she says still not fully believing that was possible and adding for good measure, "sort of." His explanation for not buying the love story wasn't the same as hers, but there were definitely elements that were very similar. She continues, "I didn't think that they were really in love. I thought they had more of a vacation-romance. Something that's dependent on the environment it exists in, because their relationship didn't exist in the real world. Maybe there were some elements of the real world and issues that they'd face in the real world present on the ship with them. But it seemed overly romanticized. And despite how she took his name and all that, if he had survived and she had given up her entire world to run off with him, while he didn't have to give up anything to be with her, I just didn't believe it would work out."

"Yeah, that makes sense," he agrees, "I could believe that more than them actually ending up happy if he didn't die." He notices that she's actually looking at him now, instead of somewhere behind him. A small smile spreads across her face and he stops thinking. Just sits there and lets seconds pass and the night get later. He comes back to himself after a minute, remembering that he is Puck and whatever thing is happening right now, doesn't happen to him. He chuckles and comments, "I didn't expect you to have a good reason for not liking the movie. Thought you were going to say that it was bad for promoting pre-marital sex."

(She's relieved, even though she doesn't think about it. Because this, this, is much safer territory with him.)

She smirks and says dryly, "How typically ass-like and judgmental of you." She adds, confessing without even thinking about it, "Besides if I really did have that attitude about movies I would hate _August Rush. _And I don't." As soon as the words leave her mouth she catches what she said and how it connects to the previous film they were talking about. She quickly defends, "I know it's got the same…lack of development in the love story area. It was fast and…not necessarily real, but I liked it anyway."

"Ugh, you would," he groans. Before she can question the fact that he's implying that he's seen it. He continues complaining, "That movie blows."

"Why?" she's quick to question and ready to defend her own contrasting opinion as soon as he reveals his.

"Cause no kid could play that good that fast," Puck declares, "I play guitar too and that was just way unrealistic. It was cool to see, but completely impossible."

Instead of attacking the fact that his reason for not liking the movie was due to his own ego like she thought she would (and that will later plague her), she finds herself going a completely different direction. She glances up from staring at the tabletop, meets his eyes briefly as she mentions, "Yeah, Kelyn said you play. She said you play her to sleep sometimes." And she finds herself not turning her eyes back down, not looking away. There's something soft, tentative, about the moment. But that's not the way things should be with them so she makes herself break it continuing, "I couldn't get her to say what you play her though. I bet it would have been good. But she chose that exact moment to realize that she probably shouldn't have been sharing about you and switched back to talking about her teacher and her friends as usual instead."

"Good," Puck comments, "for a while there I thought I may have to change schools if she said much more."

"Why?" Quinn questions confused, "I can't tell anyone anything, remember? If I did I'd just be insuring that you'd be spreading everything you know about me around school."

He hadn't actually been thinking about the rest of the school. He'd only been thinking about her. Which was really weird. He never cares what any girl thinks, not really. He tells himself that he must be awfully tired for thoughts like those to be entering his head. He responds, "Right. Almost forgot about that." He figures he really should head home, get that obviously needed sleep.

Addie comes by and interrupts for minute, asking him how he liked the pot roast, taking his empty plate, and bidding them both goodnight.

Puck takes advantage of the interruption and decides that it's time to go. He had been sitting there, tired as hell, and he hadn't been in any rush to leave when he was talking to her (hadn't even crossed his mind if he's being honest- which he isn't). He doesn't want to sink back into that- it's a bad idea for more reasons than he can count. So he stands up and declares, "I should get going." He grabs the chair he's been sitting in and turns his back on her as he puts it back at the nearby table he got it from. It's not just that that needed to be done, but doing it at that moment forced him to turn away right after he said he was leaving. It made it impossible for him to watch her reaction, to see if she had one, because really he doesn't want to know and he knows he shouldn't care.

He bends over and grabs his sister's bag, followed by his sister, all the while still avoiding her eyes.

" 'Night," he says and allows himself to glance at her. She's returned her attention to some book out in front of her, but she looks up, smiles, and says softly, "Goodnight."

He forces himself to turn around and walk out. He shouldn't be, he can't be, lingering. And he doesn't know why he feels like it anyway. Nothing about her or any interaction he's had with her makes any sense to him.

When he gets home and finds two new bills that need to be paid and that he doesn't have the money for, he thinks everything that's been making absolutely no sense to him lately (Quinn and how he is with her) will make sense once he doesn't have so many serious weights on his mind.

-o-o-o-

**Wednesday: **

Quinn thought about her conversation with Puck while she drove home the previous night, as she tried to fall asleep, and as she got ready for school that morning. By the time she gets to her first period class she pulls out her list of safe talking topics with him and adds movies, television, and anything that could be embarrassing for him. She found herself saying more than she'd prefer and learning a bit more about him than she'd like, but ultimately concluded (convinced herself) that one of the main things anyone talks about is entertainment so it had to be a perfectly safe topic. As for the embarrassing things, she did that with anyone with whom the opportunity arouse so it had to be okay with him too. Once she adds them to her list, she feels more at ease about it. (But other things still hang in her mind like how he plays his sister to sleep sometimes or how he dislikes the same movie for such a similar reason.)

By the time she's pulling into Foster's that afternoon she's resolved to believing that she was right to add it to the safe topic list. But she also won't let conversation go that way again. If they talk another selection from her list will be necessary today- perhaps the weather or the patheticness of their high school's hockey team.

Right after she helps Kelyn finish all her homework and they're eating dinner, Kelyn mentions that her teacher said that her class is having a dance at the end of the week and she's so excited---except, she doesn't really know how to dance. Quinn thinks it's weird and probably inappropriate for a third grade class to be having a dance, but she remembers some other things Kelyn mentioned throughout the week about her class and she realizes that it's probably not the kind of dance Kelyn is thinking of. She can't crush the girl's hopes though and though she doesn't understand how someone couldn't know how to dance, she doesn't want Kelyn to be worried or embarrassed and she wants her to have fun at whatever this dance ends up being.

There's a jukebox on the wall by the door. It looks pretty old and kind of beat up, but Foster tells her that it should still work. He gives her change and then stands by as she tests it out. When she tells him why she wanted it working- so she can teach Kelyn how to dance- he starts pushing the tables out of the way, calls Addie over, and they both start telling stories about days past where dancing in their bar used to happen all the time.

Though the jukebox took her money and seemed to start up, Quinn doesn't really recognize any of the songs in it. Some titles seem familiar, and so do a few of the artists, but she's not familiar enough with any of it to know if the song she selects would have the type of tempo she's looking for. Luckily, Addie knows the contents of jukebox by heart and promises she'll find them the right songs.

"Nowhere To Run To," comes on and Quinn finds that Kelyn was right, she can't dance. Somehow she just can't seem to find the rhythm of the song. She claims that it's genetic because she swears her mom and brother can't dance either. Quinn's never seen Puck at a school dance so she doesn't know if Kelyn is making an excuse or if she's right (though she could see Puck as lacking the ability to dance), but it doesn't matter. She swears to Kelyn that she can help her find the rhythm.

Addie keeps playing Martha Reeves and the Vandella's songs and by the time they've worked their way to "Dancing in the Street," Kelyn's getting the hang of it. She's at least in rhythm to the song now (though Quinn isn't sure if it was intentional or lucky).

Just in case the dance her class is having turns out to be the kind Kelyn is thinking of, and remembering how boys at that age (or really any age) dislike dancing, Quinn tells Kelyn that if she wants to dance she doesn't need a boy to do so. Just find some girlfriends and dance with them like she's dancing with her now. On that note, Addie joins them for a song, but only one song because Addie claims she's too old to be doing that anymore. She tells them to enjoy it while they're young.

Addie picks out another song and heads back behind the bar with Foster, helping him clean up after the few people who had stopped in and had dinner at the bar.

They're only about twenty seconds into Addie's newest selection, "It's In His Kiss," when the entrance swings open. Quinn doesn't notice this and neither does Kelyn- they're having fun dancing. She doesn't look up from twirling around with Kelyn until she hears snickering.

Puck is standing near the door looking like he's trying not to laugh (and not succeeding in that), probably because he doesn't want to laugh at his sister.

Quinn stops dancing and Kelyn notices her brother. She races over to him and flings herself at him in a big hug hello.

Quinn simply stands stunned for a second. It finally occurs to her that they only danced to five songs and it couldn't possibly be that late because they only started doing this just before eight. She glances to the clock on the back wall and questions interrupting Kelyn's hug with her brother, "You're back early? Is something wrong?"

"Nope," he answers as he lets his sister go, "Jerry wanted me to cover for him Saturday night, wants to get off early to go on a date, so he offered to do the same for me tonight as pay back and I wasn't about to turn down getting off work early and coming to see you." Puck says this last bit to his sister, ruffling her hair in the process.

Kelyn smiles up at him adoringly despite the fact that she's clearly trying to pull off being annoyed at him for messing up her hair as she pointedly puts it back in place.

"Well how does lasagna sound for dinner?" Addie asks as she comes around the bar towards him, apparently her and Foster already having said hello to him at some point that Quinn figures was while they were dancing and she didn't notice he was there.

"Awesome, thanks Addie," Puck responds politely.

"Good I'll go fix you a plate," Addie says as she passes him and heads for the kitchen. She pauses, turns around and adds, "For here or to-go?"

"Uh," Puck says out loud without meaning to. Deciding what to do should be much easier than this. (And he should be thinking about what his sister will want and not about Quinn and what staying or leaving could mean when she's not even a possibility.)

Luckily, Kelyn breaks in informing him that she wants to stay by saying, "Quinn's teaching me how to dance."

"Why do you need to learn how to dance?" Puck quickly asks, because she's nine and that's not normal, right?

"Our class is having a dance this Friday," Kelyn announces.

"You're in the third grade. What kind of third grade class has a dance?" he asks the room at large.

"Uh-huh," Foster agrees from his place behind the bar.

"That's not right. Dances should be for when they're older. My kids never had dances in the third grade and I wouldn't have stood for it if they did," a man eating at the bar chimed in his agreement.

"Exactly," Puck agreed with the men with an appreciative nod to them.

"It doesn't really matter what you think though," Quinn declares, "there's going to be a dance in her class on Friday whether you like it or not. And it's just a dance, with third graders. What kind of stuff do you think is going to happen? The boys are going to refuse to dance and the girls will have fun without them. Yeah, that'd be totally inappropriate for a third grade class."

"Mm-hmm," Addie agreed.

Kelyn has learned a lot from Puck and she knows how to get her way. She looks up at him with sad eyes and questions, "You're not going to not let me go, are you? It's during school and everyone else will be there. I _really_ want to go."

Puck groans and caves, declaring tightly, "Fine." He finally gets back to answering Addie, "I guess the food is for here then. Thanks."

Kelyn smiles in triumph and winks at Quinn, which Puck catches. He knows he just got played by his sister but he's not going to call her out on it. He can't not give her what she wants, he's so weak like that. "It looked like you were dancing before, what do you still need to learn anyway?" Puck asks grumpily.

Quinn honestly doesn't know the answer to the question. As far as she knew she had taught Kelyn everything. Hadn't she? She was in rhythm now.

"I don't know how to slow dance," Kelyn says and she doesn't notice the expression of either teen.

Quinn's nearly positive that Kelyn won't need to learn how to slow dance, but she doesn't want to tell her that she won't teach her.

Slow dancing? As far as Puck is concerned his sister won't be participating in any slow dancing (ever, if he has his way). Seriously, what kind of third grade class is this?

But he really doesn't know how to say no to Kelyn or how to disappoint her. He offers, "Well I can totally teach you that."

"You can't dance," Kelyn quickly declares doubtfully.

"Of course I can. I kick-ass at everything," Puck returns.

"Prove it," Kelyn challenges.

"Alright, come here," Puck begins.

Kelyn backs away as she says, "I'm not dancing with you and getting my feet stepped on. Prove you can dance with Quinn and then I'll let you teach me."

His sister was evil. Puck can't believe he never noticed it before, but she was totally evil. This was like what, time one hundred he was about to do something in front of Quinn Fabray that he really didn't want to?

"So he can step on my feet?" Quinn questions Kelyn. She doesn't mean to attack the girl, but come on, this isn't an ideal situation.

"Better you than me," Kelyn responds honestly with a shrug.

Quinn sighs. She doesn't want it to seem like she really doesn't want to do this because there's that old adage that people always like to apply to situations like these: the lady doth protest too much. That is absolutely not the case (despite the fact that she's suddenly way more nervous than she was before nationals). So she offers, "I don't have a problem with it. I'm a very good dancer and though I could make you look good too, I won't. So I'm sure you'll mess up and this whole "you can dance" thing will be over very quickly."

"_I_ can dance," Puck reiterates, taking off his jacket and tossing it on a stool. He walks over to where she is and comes to a stop a few feet away. He says glancing back between both girls, "Fine, I'll prove both of you wrong."

"Addie, we need more music," Foster hollers in hope that Addie hears him in the kitchen so he won't have to stop doing his crossword at the bar.

Addie does hear and a few seconds later she's coming back out of the kitchen and heading for the jukebox. She takes notice of how Kelyn's still near the end of the bar near the entrance and Puck and Quinn are towards the middle of the emptied floor.

As Addie flipped through selections, Puck closed the distance between him and Quinn. He'd never hesitated to touch a girl before and he swore that this would not be any different (even if said girl was Quinn Fabray).

"Good luck keeping up," he quips sarcastically as he places a hand at her waist.

"Talented people don't need luck. Not that you'd know anything about that," she returns as he takes her hand in his. (She almost faltered between sentences when his hand first touched hers, but she caught herself.)

Doris Troy's "Just One Look," started playing.

It is immediately apparent that Puck was right, he could dance. Not even thirty seconds into the song he's leading her smoothly and in count with the song. Which leaves Quinn annoyed because it's not right that he's right. (But more than she's annoyed she's noticed how the muscles in his upper arm keep flexing under her hand and it almost causes her to consciously entertain the thought that the little space between them is far too much.)

She's been taught to be graceful and its just part of who she is now so she concedes, "Fine, you can dance."

"I told you so," he returns childishly and smirking triumphantly.

Screw grace. He just had to go and be arrogant about it and that causes her occasionally used social niceties to evaporate right up. She comments, "Don't get cocky about it. You're not that good."

_Say you will, will be mine_

_Forever and always, oh-oh, oh-oh_

Before Quinn can blink she's being spun quickly and dipped. And as her wits come back to her she notices that in this nearly horizontal position she's being held much, much closer to him and his face is right there in front of hers.

"I'm not that good?" he questions smirking because he knows she'd be lying if she didn't eat her words now.

"Fine," she concedes in a huff (she just remembered to breathe), "you're _very_ good."

He rights her effortlessly and doesn't seem to notice that he's holding her closer now as he continues to dance with her. "Damn straight," he agrees.

In an effort to get away from stroking his ego, without looking like that's her purpose, Quinn questions conversationally, "Where'd you learn how to dance anyway?"

"Temple," he answers and waits to see her surprise/confusion before continuing, "They offer free lessons to kids once a year so that they can know how to dance at bar-mitzvahs and bat-mitzvahs. I didn't have a party, or even anyone besides family at my bar-mitzvah- didn't have the money. But since it was free and I'd be invited to other kids', my mom wanted me to take lessons." He smirks a little and adds, "And since I was good at it, it made it really easy for me to pick up girls at them."

She rolls her eyes because of course he was chasing after girls even then. But she doesn't make any comment about it, something snide or smart-ass. She passes up the opportunity and she doesn't even notice while she does it. Instead, she smiles a little finding something familiar (safe) about the predictable nature of his motive.

He's not usually inclined to ask a girl a question so he can actually learn about her. But she's smiling just the slightest bit at him and he finds words coming out before he can stop them. (Later, he'll tell himself that he asked in the aim of making fun of her.) He returns the question, "How'd you learn how to dance? Something at your country club?"

She wonders if she ever mentioned that her parents belong (and often force her to attend events at) the town's country club. She hates it though so she doubts she brought it up, which means that he assumed her family belonged and she can't deny it even though she couldn't care less about those things because he's right, they do belong. Rather than dwelling on the predictable, yuppie life her parents keep forcing on her, she bites her lip for a second, hesitating in answering before she admits, "I learned for the annual Chastity Ball."

He laughs. (He's close enough that she can just barely feel the ghost of how his laughter affects his body and all the muscles it moves.)

"Chastity Ball," he gets out through the laughter, "that's hilarious." He adds, calming down, "Bet you were queen of that dance."

Was he stalking her? Because, seriously, how did he know this stuff? (Or was her life and the world she had been placed in really just that predictable.)

When she doesn't respond, instead a mild, irritated glare sliding on to her features and directed at him, he catches on. "They actually have a queen and you were it?"

"Of course I was," she retorts, "you're allowed to attend once you're fourteen and I've been queen every year I've gone. Most of the other people aren't chaste by choice, it's due to their unattractiveness. And the queen represents them as a group and since they want other people to join they can't pick one of the many homely people at the dance."

Puck kind of gets that a little, but he also thinks that these Christian people running this whole chaste teens thing must be idiots. He ponders this out loud because he figures she would have some kind of answer to defend "her people," "Yeah well I'm sure you're right about the other people being ugly and for recruiting girls I could see why they'd pick you. But if they want guys to join your abstinence group you're like the worst person they could pick. The last thing any guy who sees you is going to think is that he doesn't want to have sex." It's only after the words have left his mouth and he can't take them back that he realizes what he said. Geez, he practically gave her a compliment and complimenting a girl, that's not right, that's not him.

She knows it was kind of crude, but she can feel the heat on her cheeks anyway.

Lucky for both of them their attention is stolen from having to face the other by hearing, "Come on Addie." This is promptly followed by Kelyn coming through the kitchen door pulling Addie through it behind her as she pleads, "That song was still too fast. I need to know how to _slow_ dance and I need to see if Noah can." When they reach the juke box Kelyn pleads, "Pick a _slow _one this time."

"Alright, alright," Addie agrees hoping that it seems like she's just doing what the girl wants. Though bless that girl for giving her a legitimate reason for doing something that she already wanted to but didn't want it to seem like she was meddling.

_(When did the last song end? _passes through both of their minds but is written off just as quickly as it entered because she's Quinn and he's Puck and in the end that means that the answer can't matter.)

"These Arms of Mine," by Otis Redding comes on.

He's still holding her and she's still holding on to him, a fact that is completely ignored as they simply stand still as the new song begins. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that it'd be just one song and now a second one was beginning. Were they supposed to dance or part?

_These arms of mine_

"Well, dance!" Kelyn orders. She's still got to learn how to dance and she didn't get Addie to put on this slower song for her. This was for them so they could prove to her that they're qualified to teach her so she doesn't end up learning to dance from someone who's lack of ability will lead to her humiliating herself. Puck may change the channel just as she's getting into _Gossip Girl_, but they have internet, she's seen all the episodes, and if it's taught her anything it's that people (even the ones you trust) can be out to get you. Not that she doesn't trust her brother or Quinn, but she might as well get proof that she's not going to get screwed over since she can.

At his sister's command, Puck begins leading them again. They moved much slower, a gentle sway as the song called for. The lack of concentration the slower movement required, the fact that neither of them wanted to acknowledge where the conversation left off, it left them nothing to focus on but each other.

To distract himself from the girl he was dancing with, Puck glances at his sister and says the first thing he thinks, "I don't want her slow dancing. Her class is too young to have a dance."

"I agree," Quinn responds and finds his surprised eyes instantly on hers. Before he can say anything else she offers, "But I'm pretty sure they won't be having the type of dance she's thinking of. She's been talking about how they've been studying different cultures for a while now and I think they'll be learning dances related to different cultures and probably more in a line-dancing style."

He breathes a sigh of relief. Just because Quinn believes that his sister is wrong about the type of dance doesn't make it true, but it's at least a comfort to know that there's a good possibility that she could be wrong. "Good," he acknowledges. He glances over to his sister again and the worry just won't let go. "Hey Kel," he calls and once he has her attention he continues, "see where my hand is on Quinn? If a guy ever has it any lower on you like-"

"You better not demonstrate," Quinn warns because no matter what flitting has been going on in her stomach around him that she refuses to acknowledge she's still not going to willingly let a guy touch her anywhere even slightly indecent.

He rolls his eyes at her as he responds, "Calm down prudie." He continues with his attention back on his sister, "If a guy's hand is even a centimeter lower I want you to knee him in nads. Okay?"

Before Kelyn can respond and agree (her big brother was asking her to do something, of course she was going to agree), Quinn interjects, "No you can't do that." Before Kelyn can ask Quinn why she doesn't want her to do it, Quinn's attention is back on her brother as she continues, "She'll have the opportunity for that action with a guy she's dancing with, but she'd also get caught doing it at a _school_ dance and she'd be the one to end up in trouble due to very obvious violence."

Puck never had a second thought about doing anything that may end him up in trouble at school, but it was different with his sister. He didn't want Quinn to be right, but he also didn't want Kelyn to have his kind of reputation. "What do you suggest then?" he challenges, kind of hoping that she wouldn't have an answer so he could be right by default.

"Step on his toes," Quinn offers as if it's obvious because she's been forced to dance with plenty of rich kids who felt "entitled" at the country club and she's learned how to deal with a guy who thinks it's his right to play grab-ass with her and still come out looking like she's the picture of innocence. She continues, "I don't simply mean 'step on' his toes, I mean stomp on one of his feet with all your might and then claim it was an accident and apologize profusely. Then the next time you see him completely alone you knee him in the crotch and if he reports you, you claim he tried to touch you 'in bad places' with the hope that your reputation is good enough that you're trusted over him. It also wouldn't hurt to cry as you 'relive the ordeal.' I suggest learning how to make yourself cry."

Why Kelyn wonders if all that would really be necessary since she thought dances were supposed to be fun, Puck goes over everything she said again and decides what he thinks about it. "Okay, that is better. Kind of evil, but kind of genius too," he admits and he doesn't mean it to sound as much like a compliment as it does. "Kelyn," he declares, "if you need to, you do what Quinn said."

To distract herself from the smile that wanted to break out at his compliment, Quinn focuses on the matter at hand and checks with Kelyn, "You can fake cry, right?"

"She can," Puck answers before Kelyn can.

"You know?" Kelyn asks her brother, surprised because it always worked on him so she had no idea that he knew.

It took him longer to figure out than he'd like to admit, but of course he knew, he just still never wanted to tell her no though. This thought turning verbal is stopped by Addie though as she calls, "Talking about violence. Talking at all. That's just not right during Otis."

All three minor's attention is drawn to Addie in that moment and they all share the same thought: _when did Addie and Foster join in dancing?_ All wrapped up in their own world and worries they hadn't even noticed that as soon as the song came on Addie persuaded her husband out from behind the bar to dance with her.

They all know that Addie isn't ordering them not to talk, but looking at her and Foster on the other side of the bar, dancing so close and looking at each other so sweetly, it's hard not to just do what they want and let them have the rest of the song to themselves. Only it's not really to just them because Puck doesn't stop dancing and neither does Quinn. But it's all over in less than thirty more seconds because the song comes to an end. Still, for nearly thirty seconds two pairs of people were simply slowly moving to the sweet song.

When it does end Addie heads back to the kitchen promising Puck that his dinner will be out in thirty seconds or less.

Three dances would be two more than it should have been and they both know that it shouldn't happen. Quinn promptly asks Foster if he'll be her next dance while Puck begins to teach his sister how to dance.

And just like that everything was over. Addie brought Puck's food out and stole her husband back from Quinn to dance with again and Quinn took over trying to teach Kelyn to slow dance while Puck ate at their usual booth and watched them all. It was a smooth transition. So smooth that it seemed like nothing was happening or had happened. They were already so good at pretending; so entrenched in denial that they could part like nothing happened and nothing mattered (habits that would ruin them---more than once).

-o-o-o-

**Thursday:**

Quinn thought about how Thursday would go a hundred times more frequently than she'd ever admit to.

Today was her last day with Kelyn (again). She was not going to offer to watch her ever again. Or at least that was the decision she felt like was necessary to make (for reasons she would not let herself think about), but then again it also seemed really unfair of her to do that to Kelyn. She supposed that if Puck asked her to watch his sister she could accept (after all WWJD?). Yet maybe she should let him know that she wouldn't be opposed to extending their arrangement. But if she does that wouldn't she basically be offering to watch Kelyn longer?

These were the thoughts she had swirling in her head making her unconsciously worry her lower lip throughout the school day.

(Before Wednesday night she had been planning on simply offering again. But when she thought about it this week had become everything it couldn't be. They'd had a fight (sort of), an actual (_good_) conversation. And they danced, twice. She had let things get to a place that she couldn't let them, couldn't deal with them being.)

Only Quinn didn't know that all of her worrying about the ominous meaning and potential of_ Thursday_ was for nothing. There were greater things happening that she couldn't control.

-o-o-o-

It started with a phone call, for both of them.

Puck's came a little after eight. He honestly hadn't given any thought to the fact that today was the last day that Quinn said she'd watch Kelyn, which would make him without a sitter next week (and without Quinn). He hadn't seen his mom around in a week and by the appearance of their apartment he didn't think she'd even been there in a week either. He had way too much to worry about every second to think past the present at all. There was no point thinking past each current moment anyway he'd learn, because everything was always changing on him.

That's what the phone call was. It was another change. That change forces him to make a phone call himself about forty minutes later and it's this phone call that changes everything for Quinn.

When Puck had dropped Kelyn off they hadn't talked at all as usual. But that left her wondering about what would happen when he came back. Only all the time she spent telling herself she wasn't thinking about what would, wouldn't, could or couldn't happen when he came back would be a waste. He wasn't coming back.

She was in the middle of playing operation with Kelyn, trying to remove the funny bone, when her phone started ringing. She always checked it because if it was her parents they'd get suspicious if she didn't answer. She didn't recognize the number that popped up on her screen and normally she didn't answer numbers she didn't know, but amid frustration about dropping the funny bone due to the ringing phone, she answered agitatedly, "Hello?"

"Hey, it's Puck," he says, the words sticking slightly in his mouth because it felt like a weird thing to have to say (to her).

Later, she'd wonder how he got her number, but now all she could think was what she immediately interrupted with, "Is something wrong?"

"Yeah," he answered regrettably. He hated that he had to involve her in this but everything else was going to hell so it wasn't that big of a surprise or worry that this was too. He sighed heavily into the phone and explained with purposeful vagueness, "I'm at the hospital. My mom was taken here. She's okay, but she's going to be here for a while and I need to be here for a while longer tonight. Can you take Kelyn home and then get our neighbor to stay with her until I get back?"

"Yeah, absolutely," she answers immediately and before she thinks about it she offers, "I could stay with her though. It's no problem at all."

He shifts his weight, plays with the little metal door where the change comes out on the payphone (stupid no cell phone in the hospital rule forcing him to use it). He concedes casually, "Cool. Thanks."

Before he can add what he still has to she questions, "Does Kelyn have a key? And can she tell me how to get there from here?"

"She doesn't have a key and we don't have one hidden under a doormat or anything. You'll have to stop by here so I can give you mine and she should be able to get you to our place from here. We're on Pine," Puck explains.

"Pine, I know where that is," Quinn responds as she notices that the mention of her street draws Kelyn's attention from the game and onto her.

He tries not to hesitate because he knows he doesn't have that kind of time (even if she makes him want to linger), "So I'll meet you guys in the waiting area, right up front, in like twenty minutes."

"Yeah, we'll be there," Quinn quickly agrees.

"Oh, and Quinn," he adds thinking of Kelyn, "Kel's kind of scared of narrow roads like the bar's on, especially at night. Something about thinking the cars in the other lane are gonna hit us head on. You're going to need to sing to her to distract her."

"Okay," she agrees immediately without giving it a thought. This is the type of situation to act now, think later.

"Alright, gotta get back, thanks," Puck says and hangs up the phone promptly, because really, he should get back.

It takes her a second to realize he's hung up, but as soon as she does notice she puts her phone away and begins packing her things. She tells Kelyn that Puck's been held up, there's nothing to worry about, but she's going to drive her to meet Puck and then take her home. Once Kelyn's things are ready to go and she's ready to go she hurries Kelyn into her car. Foster and Addie seem concerned about her quick departure with Kelyn, which is actually really nice to see that they care, and she quietly promises them that she'll explain later.

As soon as she's put her car in gear she remembers she's supposed to sing. She begins to wonder if Puck was just screwing with her---taking any opportunity he could to do so. But as she pulled out onto the road she glanced over at Kelyn, who's eyes were wide with fear and who's hand was clenching the door handle as soon as she noticed lights heading towards them in the other lane. Quinn quickly skipped through her CD's in her changer and through the tracks to a familiar (and hopefully appropriate- she had no idea what Kelyn was allowed to listen to) classic.

When the words to "Like a Prayer" started playing she began singing along without hesitation. Madonna was an old favorite and she knew all the words well. Her parents hated Madonna, thought she was totally inappropriate. But when she was young she used to sneak into her sister's room when their parents were asleep and play her music, dance and sing along.

She glances over to Kelyn about a minute through the song and she's glad to see that she seems to be relaxed. By half way through she's even got Kelyn singing the chorus with her. And by the time it's over they're back on city streets, wider streets that Kelyn doesn't seem to mind at all. But Madonna is still playing and really how could they not sing along to "Open Your Heart" too?

The mood in the car quickly changes as Quinn pulls into the parking lot of the hospital.

"Noah's here?" Kelyn asks fearfully.

"Yes, but he's fine," Quinn promises.

When they get out of the car Quinn grabs Kelyn's hand because the parking lot is dark and it feels safer to have hold of her hand, to make sure she doesn't lose her. She leads them into the entrance and around a corner into the waiting room still holding Kelyn's hand. Yet Puck is there as promised and Kelyn let's go and runs to him as soon as she sees him there.

Puck catches Kelyn, picks her up and hugs her tight. "Everything's okay," he promises. He sets her down just as Quinn catches up to where they are. He crouches down to her level and explains (lies), "Mom's here. She was coming home from work, earlier for the first time in weeks, and she was rear-ended. She's fine, just a bump on her head, but they're going to keep her here overnight."

"Can we see her?" Kelyn asks concerned and hoping that they can because she hadn't seen her mother at all lately.

"Nah, they're stitching up her head right now, and visiting hours are over now anyway," Puck says. He notices his sister's wide eyes and realizes what he said. He amends, "It's just a small cut on head. Like four stitches. You won't even notice it." He swears to her again, "She's fine. And you can see that for yourself tomorrow. I'll bring you by here either before or after school, whichever they allow us in- or both."

"Okay," Kelyn agrees, believing her brother because she's never had any reason not to.

"Okay," Puck agrees. He stands back up and asks his sister, "So right now, I need to stay here so Quinn's going to take you home and stay with you there until I get back. Cool?"

"Cool," she concurs.

Puck fishes his keys out of his pocket, pries the right one off of the ring and hands it over to Quinn (fingers managing to miss each other in the exchange of the small object).

Quinn knows that Puck was probably lying to his sister and listened to every word carefully so she didn't blow the lie for him. She always hated it when her parents pretended, but somehow when he does it for his sister she gets the point, agrees with it even.

"Alright, you should get home and get to bed," Puck tells his sister. She groans because it's not _that_ late yet. He crouches back down and hugs her again, stands back up and concludes, "Okay, get going now."

"Fine," Kelyn concedes, " 'Night egghead."

"Goodnight buba," he returns.

Quinn bites her lower lip because it feels like she's smiling and she shouldn't be. She glances down and away from them quickly before regaining her massive amounts of control and trying desperately to come up with something to add (she knows she had yet to say a single word since they got there, not that she'd had a place to yet).

She's saved from having to come up with something to say when they hear a male voice holler, "Noah!" It came from a middle-aged man about two hundred feet away down the hallway. His eyes narrow on Kelyn thoughtfully as he continues down the hall toward them, his feet picking up pace as he does so.

Puck turns around to see who called his name and immediately turns back to them and orders to Quinn, anger suddenly radiating off of him, "Get her out of here. Now."

Quinn's seen him in fights, but she's never seen him like that and she doesn't hesitate for a second to grab Kelyn's hand and pull her back around the corner and out the door, practically jogging them out of the hospital. When they're passing through the automatic doors, they hear a loud commotion and Quinn thinks it sounds distinctly like someone has been hit, like a fight, but she doesn't stop because that's not what she's supposed to do. She just keeps them moving, towards the car and then to Kelyn's home.

-o-o-o-

It feels weird to be in Puck's home (apartment).

Quinn hadn't given it any thought when they first got there. She didn't want Kelyn to think about the hospital and her last moment with her brother and what they may have heard so as she fought with their sticky lock to get them inside she began making small talk. She continued to try and make conversation about everything possible as she made Kelyn get ready for bed and pretty much up until the time Kelyn finally fell asleep. She talked about movies she saw on a shelf they passed by as they headed for Kelyn's room (which led to talking about any movie). She talked about anything she saw in Kelyn's room- like what was the story behind her jewelry box with the toy ballerina that spun? She knew it probably got annoying and seemed like she wouldn't shut up, but she didn't know what else to do to try to prevent Kelyn from thinking about anything her night had been.

When Kelyn finally falls asleep a little after ten Quinn finally relaxes. She leaves Kelyn's room, leaving the door open just a creek. She begins to tip-toe away until she realizes that she has no idea what to do now. This is when it begins to get weird that she's in Puck's apartment.

Honestly, she considers opening the other doors down the hallway and not just to find out which one is the bathroom (which she already knows thanks to Kelyn). But if she looks for and then in Puck's room that would mean she has some kind of interest in him, right? And she doesn't so she forces herself to keep walking down the hall and into the living room.

She takes in the two chairs, but opts for the couch. She sits on it gingerly for the first thirty minutes, feeling too tense and out of place to let herself relax. It's exhaustion that finally gets her to relax on it because she still has early morning cheer practices and it's nearing eleven.

She has the television on and settled on re-runs of old television shows. She had spent the first fifteen minutes she was sitting there with it off, thinking that he could be there any second. Then she figured she should do something other than just watch TV, but she left her book bag in her car and she doesn't feel right about locking Kelyn in the apartment alone for a minute just so she can go get it. So she settles on doing something that has absolutely no value.

At almost eleven o'clock exactly, just as she's dosing off with _The Nanny_ playing in the background, she hears a soft knock at the door. She pads to the door as quickly and quietly as her feet will take her. The lock doesn't seem so sticky from this side and she manages to get the deadbolt turned and door open easily. And then she's just standing in front of him, on the wrong side of the threshold of the door to his apartment (not that there was a right side, not for them). She steps aside as she opens the door. She looks away from him, glances in the direction of the hallway as she says, "Kelyn's been asleep for about an hour."

"Good," he comments as he comes in and he shuts the door behind him because she had stepped away from it, leaving it for him to do (it wasn't her door to shut, and perhaps he wanted her to walk right out of it this moment anyway).

She's a little surprised that he's not just saying goodnight, ending all of this right now. But when she catches him shutting the door it's not the only thing that startles her. She see's his hand, red and swollen and bloody. "What happened to your hand?" she asks, feeling like she already knows the answer, and grabbing at his wrist and pulling his hand toward her to examine before he has the chance to step away from the shut door.

Her hand on his wrist, it takes him by surprise and it takes him a second to recover thoughts in his head and supply his stubborn answer, "Nothing."

"Clearly," she responds sarcastically. She already knows how it got this way though, even if she doesn't understand why, so she doesn't press it right now. Instead she asks, "You were at a hospital though, why didn't anyone…take care of it?"

"Because I don't need the added medical bills. Hospitals don't do anything for free," Puck grumbles as he yanks his arm away from her, finally gaining his wits about him again.

Quinn grabs his arm back angrily and declares, "Then you need someone to fix it now."

He pulls his arm out of her grasp again and counters, "No, I need to go check on Kelyn."

"I already did. She's fine, she's sleeping," Quinn argues as she grabs his arm again.

"Fuck," he swears as she pulls at his arm, trying to drag him along with her while he stubbornly tried not to go. He drags his feet along instinctively because being bull-headed hurt and she's still pulling. He informs her, "That _hurt_."

She pulls him into his kitchen and puts his hand under the sink. She turns it on and as he winces as the water comes into contact with his hand she rolls her eyes and says, "Please, it's not that bad. Get over it."

"Like you would know if it's that bad. Brawl often, cheerleader?" Puck counters as she turns off the water and grabs a kitchen towel and gently dabs it dry. All the blood comes off of his hand and even thought it's dark in the kitchen (she hadn't paused to turn on a light as they came in) she can tell there's no cuts on his hand (it must have been the other person's blood- which is also all over the cuff of his sleeve).

She can hear him hissing slightly every time the cloth comes into contact with the swollen skin on his hand. Concentration remaining on drying his damaged hand as carefully as possible, she answers, "I sprained my ankle the day of Nationals this year, but I didn't miss a single step, didn't falter at all during the whole routine."

"Pssht, yeah right," he says doubtfully, "I never saw you with a brace or cast afterwards." He overlooks the fact that he's admitting that he would have noticed her.

"Braces, casts, and wraps don't go with the uniform," Quinn repeats, the order stuck in her head. She glances away from his hand, catches his face and the bit of confusion there. She sighs a little and explains, "Coach Sylvester always says that. If we want to wear any of them, then we'd have to turn in our uniforms."

"Harsh," he comments.

She shrugs, "It's not so bad. At least we win."

"Only team in our school that does," Puck says, not meaning for it to be a compliment, just a pretty unfortunate fact given the amount of teams they have at their school.

As she feels tugging at her mouth, the corners wanting to lift even though rationally she knows they have no reason to, she realizes that she's standing right in front of him (mere inches), in a dark room, and almost holding his hand (the kitchen towel being the barrier between skin touching skin). This isn't…she takes action to change the situation. "There," she concludes, deciding his hand is indeed dry and cut free. "I'll prepare you some ice to use on your hand so it's not swollen tomorrow and you can actually use it," she offers, not waiting for him to respond before she takes the few steps to his freezer and begins browsing it.

"Okay," he agrees, more than a little confused but too tired to begin to try and resolve any of it.

She wants to tell him to go sit down because it's weird to have him…near. She needs a break from his presence (even if it's only been a few minutes that he's even been here). But it doesn't feel right to order him around in his own home either.

"I'm gonna check on Kel," he mutters as he promptly leaves his kitchen where she's scanning the contents of his freezer. Kelyn is indeed asleep, just like Quinn said, and looking pretty content. He sighs heavily as he leaves her doorway and heads for the living room, plopping down on the couch in a heap. Exhaustion over takes him immediately and while he's sure he didn't fall asleep, he spaced out enough not to notice when Quinn had entered the room.

She didn't hesitate to sit right up next to him on the couch (because she's thought far enough ahead to know what it would mean if she did). She grabs his hand from him again, gently this time, and places a bag of frozen peas on top of it. She puts her other hand under his, supporting it and holding it just there, in place.

"Peas?" he says questioningly.

"Softer than ice cubes," she offers by way of explanation.

Silence settles between them, _The Nanny_ still playing faintly. The light of one lamp and the television are their only sources of light, neither bothering to turn anything else on.

He closes his eyes for a few seconds and gives in to thinking about the moment he's actually in and forgetting about everything else. His hand should get numb from the cold soon, but he can feel her so…sharply, clearly. He doesn't remember the last time he actually noticed a girl's hand because it was touching his. He's not sure that he ever has. It makes lyrics stream in his head. His mom's a huge Neil Diamond fan and he remembers a childhood of often hearing the line, "Hands, touching hands." Maybe he gets that a little now.

He opens his eyes and glances at her through the corner of his eyes. She's just sitting there, so close she's about an inch away from him on the couch. And she's holding his hand in hers and a pack of frozen peas, eyes fixed downward, thoughtful.

He glances away, feels his hand begin to sting from the cold and it brings back everything he forgot about for a second there, everything that brought him to this place.

She wants to say something. She wants to make conversations so she doesn't feel so… (doesn't _feel_). His hand getting cold is starting to make hers freeze. She wants to ask if his mother is really okay, but it doesn't really feel like it's her place.

He's not sure what possesses him to start talking or to tell her anything that was true, but one second he was just sitting there thinking his hand hurt like a sonavabitch and the next he was telling her about the reason he hurt it in the first place. "It was my dad," he says in a low tone, "the guy who was…" he trails off and doesn't finish; she was there, she can fill in the blank. He shakes his head a little, "He actually…I don't know what he thought he could do or wanted to, but he doesn't, can't do anything."

"What happened?" she prods softly because maybe she was wrong in not feeling like it was her place.

Later, he'll wonder why he never even considered not responding. He doesn't look at her though, just stares off in straight ahead. "So my dad left seven years ago, right? But he didn't just walk out like any normal person, you know. He wasn't like some deadbeat jackass who finally just had enough and took off. He actually acted like he was happy and then we come home one day and he's packing. He tells my mom that he never loved her, never even really liked her that much, but he knew he should have and he was supposed to get married because it's just what people did. And, not that she asked, but that's why he didn't object to having kids either, because that's just what people do. But he was tired of doing what everyone else does and not being happy at all so he left. And he didn't want to be associated with what he didn't want, my mom or me and my sister, at all so he somehow actually won when my mom took him to court to get alimony and child support out of him. I still have no idea how that happened because it was pretty damn clear that his income as a dentist was what was way keeping us afloat over her income as a dental hygienist- especially since she was actually out of work during the lawsuit because she worked for his practice, which he shut down all suddenly when he took off because he didn't want any of us anymore."

The anger continues to build in his tone as he continues, "Then today I get a call from the hospital because my mom's there, some kind of accident is all they tell me. I get there and he's there. He's the one that took her there. Well, he told the ambulance to take her there and since he's a fucking idiot he thought he should go along. See, my mom pulls it together most of the time even though my dad leaving really screwed her up because she was actually happy and it turned out everything she built her life on, everything she believed in, turned out to be a lie. So I get it when she gives in and gets all depressed, it's his fault she's like that. But then I guess she'd been parked outside his house, didn't even knew he lived in Yoder, and he came out and confronted her, tried to tell her to leave. He could smell the alcohol on her breath and tried to force her out of the car and to get her a cab like he actually cared, pssht. Somehow, and I don't know why he's not being arrested for abuse, he struggled with her, she ended up with a bump on her head, a concussion, and she was unconscious for a while." He sighs, his tone returning to the low whisper it had started out as as he says disbelievingly, "He actually tried to talk to me. Like…nothing that he did had ever happened. And when he was coming towards Kel… she doesn't remember him and I'm not letting her know him just so she can learn on her own that he's a bastard."

"You hit him," she states, not needing to ask because she knows it's true.

When she says it, her hand moves under his a little, like she's brushing her fingertips along his fingers (like she's moving to intertwine their fingers, but realizes she can't and continues her fingers' movement without pause). He's amazed he can feel the movement at all because his hand had felt so numbly cold until she did that. "Yeah," he says and he can feel himself smiling a little, because as much as his hand hurts now from beating the crap out of his dad, it felt really, really good to do.

"Sounds like he deserved it," she says approvingly. She's never been too keen on her parents, but compared to his dad she knows she has it easy. And if she was him, she would have at least wanted to do the same thing and she knows it.

He turns to her, smiling and eyebrow raised. "I thought your god didn't like violence," he says because he just can't figure her out (can't figure out why it feels so good to have her agree with him either).

"He doesn't," Quinn agrees and adds with a smile of her own, head turned toward him, "but I've always found it very useful."

He laughs and finds himself saying, "You know for a Christian chick you're pretty evil."

"I'm taking that as a compliment," she says proudly.

"It is," he assures. And he's still sitting there smiling at her and she's still sitting there smiling at him and his hand is still between both of hers and a bag of frozen peas. He looks away, because this isn't how things go for him usually (he doesn't stop smiling though, can't yet).

"So how is your mom really?" she asks without even considering that it might not be her place now and she knows that _they_ can't just dwell in silence right there alone like that (it felt like they were so close to…something).

The smile falls from his face. Not that his mom is at all bad, just not exactly the happiest topic right now given all the stress it's created. He sighs, "Physically she'll be fine. Released from the hospital tomorrow. But mentally she feels horrible. She's never driven before when she's been…in one of these depressed moods. She'll go places but she'll walk or take a cab. She said she's never driven because no matter how bad she's felt she's always known that she has to come back to us, she can't do anything that could end up leaving us on our own. She doesn't remember getting in her car or driving to my dad's house at all. She was parked outside it for a week though and he finally just came to tell her to leave today. Today is really all she kind of remembers. And she feels really bad. She doesn't want to keep doing this so she put herself in some rehab-detox thing for the rest of the weekend and then the doctor is helping her find a psychiatrist, which may be kind of difficult because she's back to her usual self and refusing to see one that's not Jewish." Before she has the chance to comment he adds hastily remembering, "And she mentioned she saved and hid some money for a time like this somewhere in the apartment. The stuff they gave her to help her sleep kind of kicked in before she told me where, but I'll find out tomorrow and I'll be able to pay you back soon."

"Don't worry about it," she brushes off, "you have a month before I come after you for it, remember?" (It came out a lot more flirtatious than it sounded in her head where she thought it would sound more like a threat.)

He knows he's not opposed to having her "come after him" in any way. He knows that she doesn't mean it like that though, in the way that he's too tired to pretend he doesn't want right now. He plays along, "Come after me using violence right? Since you find it useful."

"Of course. It's the most effective way to get what you want. Along with verbal harassment, strategic vicious rumors, and blackmail," she jokes (sort of- not that she'd do any of it to him- right now- but it was effective when used).

He chuckles a little, eyes crinkling in the corners from how wide his smile still is.

As silence begins to settle over them again, she offers quietly, "I'm glad your mom's okay." She's been taught to be polite (but that's not what made her say it).

"Yeah, me too," he breaths, letting the television capture his attention even though the volume is too low to actually understand anything that's being said.

(As they sit in a full two minutes of silence he's completely aware that he can't feel his hand anymore it's so cold. He doesn't need the thawing peas on it anymore. And even though it's late and she probably shouldn't be there, with him, any longer, he doesn't say a single thing to suggest that she should leave.)

She chews on the right corner of her bottom lip and hesitates for a full minute of their silence. There's no logic in what she's thinking and it bothers her that she doesn't seem to really care. She has no reason to stay a minute longer, but she can't think of a very good reason to leave either. (And if she stays maybe she can prove to herself that she really does not care (about him).) Ultimately she can't help saying, "I think _ER_ is on right now."

He manages to play it like he doesn't care, shrugging and continuing to stare off into space for all of a dozen seconds before he sighs and gives in. He leans forward to grab the remote off the coffee table in front of him with his good hand, his other hand being gripped a little to be kept in place in the process (which lets him know that he can still feel a little in that hand, can still feel her). He doesn't have to search to find out what channel she's referring to; familiar enough with the scheduled re-runs to know where he's heading. "Oh this is a good one," he can't help commenting as the first twenty seconds play and he easily recalls what happens in the rest of the episode.

"Why?" Quinn asks, furrowing her brow at the television because it looks vaguely familiar.

"Carter and Lucy get stabbed," he answers easily (and ignoring the fact that it's Valentine's Day in the episode and it appears he's about to watch it with a girl, on his couch, alone, at night).

"Oh, I remember that!" she exclaims. She immediately feels completely embarrassed at her mini-outburst and she can feel so much heat rising on her cheeks she knows she's blushing. It doesn't help that what she said actually tore his attention away from the TV and on to her. He cocks an eyebrow at her and she admits, smiling through the mortification, "I kind of had a crush on Dr. Carter when I was like nine and I watched all the episodes he was in over and over."

He laughs for about a full minute. When he finally calms down he questions, "So Dr. Carter, huh? Why?"

She opens her mouth to reply and shuts it again. After a few seconds of consideration she concludes, "I honestly have no idea. Now that I think about it, I really don't like his character very much. I guess I just thought he was cute."

He's said far more about himself tonight than he ever does to anyone so he doesn't know why he feels like he needs to add to all that, but he does. He offers, "I thought Lucy was hot for a while."

"Just for a while?" she asks curiously because as far as she could remember the actress' look didn't change while she played the role.

"Yeah, that whole pining after Carter thing, all desperately, kind of killed it," he comments distractedly, attention returning to the show that just came back from a commercial break.

This same thing between them keeps playing out for the rest of the night. They watch in silence, find something to say during the commercials that they can't fake honest interest in and need something to fill the awkward void. His hand stays between hers, though the bag of thawed peas falls away at some point and they choose not to notice (just like they choose not to notice how her hands, with his in between, come to rest toward her knee).

It's not how she thought the Thursday would go and it's not how he expected such a crappy day to end, but neither of them is exactly unhappy or disappointed with the outcome and they know it. For tonight, they both know that it was a good night.

(Here's something you should know: Tomorrow they'll wake up next to each other. They'll both write it off as meaningless and as something that will never happen again. They'll be wrong, about everything.)

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**A/N: I hope you enjoyed the chapter! **

**Remember reviews= love, so please leave one if you have the time.**

Oh, and some of you have been reviewing anonymously, which is much appreciate of course, but I'd love to respond to your lovely reviews so if you have an account or another way for me to do that, please let me know.

**Next chapter title:** _This is not what I'm like, this is not what I do; This is not what I'm like, I think I'm falling for you. _It's from The Magic Numbers song "I See You, You See Me", which may pop up again, possibly.

And just in case the question pops up a lot in review, I want to address here that no, Quinn won't end up somehow watching Kelyn again. That is indeed over. So what's going to happen next? Hopefully the next chapter won't take so long to write (and school annoyance will miraculously disappear) and you'll get to find out in a few weeks or so.

**Thanks again for reading and I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!**


	4. Chapter 3 Part 1

**A/N: First, thank you again to all you wonderful people who reviewed!**

Second, depending on your own personal opinion, I either have some good news or some bad news. This, as you may have already noticed, is cited as **Chapter 3: Part 1**. I mentioned that I thought chapters would get shorter and boy was I wrong. I didn't realize until I was way into this chapter that the first two weeks Puck and Quinn spent together allowing them to get more comfortable with each other meant more conversations and therefore more text. I tried to go back and delete things in a desperate attempt to make these two parts fit one shorter chapter, but I honestly couldn't. I spent a long time trying to, but everything is either relevant now or will be necessary later (or maybe I suck at editing, which probably true). There's a lot of growth ahead, which is necessary to get them to a point that we're all looking forward to, and the overall purpose of this part couldn't be split more or altered. But to make it easier to read in a slightly more manageable manner, I did split up the chapter and the next half (which is even longer than this part, sorry) is finished and will be uploaded within the next week, as soon as I get the chance to proofread it to my satisfaction.

Third, there's a story coming from Addie in this chapter, about how her and Foster got together, and just in case anyone thinks it's super unlikely or ridiculous, it should be noted that I actually based them (semi-loosely) on a couple I know, not quite as old but with an extremely similar history.

Fourth, for anyone willing to indulge me, does anyone else know of kids partying in orchards? The town that the college I went to for undergrad didn't have kids partying outside really at all, despite generally gorgeous weather. Yet, in my hometown kids still party in orchards (or at the dumps, which I used in another story) because it's way more convenient than trying to find someone's house to go to. Is this something unique to my crappy hometown or does anyone else out there living somewhere suburban find orchard parties common and completely believable in this story?

**Fifth, I hope you enjoy the chapter!**

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**Cheated Hearts

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_III. This is not what I'm like, this is not what I do; This is not what I'm like, I think I'm falling for you_

(Here's something you should know: She falls asleep about twenty minutes into the post Lucy-and-Carter get stabbed episode of _ER_. He glances over at her during a commercial break because she's not talking like they have been and he sees her, asleep. He spends a good ten minutes only thinking about what he should do. Ultimately, he pulls the throw off of the back of the couch and puts it over her and does nothing more at all. And he's still not willing to admit that this is different.)

When she wakes up Friday morning she's immediately aware that she's not at home. She doesn't panic though. Last night comes back to her very quickly, very clearly. Plus, despite just having woken, she knows that the only way this (i.e. effectively spending the night with Puck) will matter is if she lets it.

She sits up from her back-and-neck-pain inducing slumping on the couch and stretches in an effort to relieve her sore muscles. She pauses in the movement abruptly when she notices that Puck's there, next to her on his couch and asleep like she was. He did not stay, she tells her self firmly. He must have just fallen asleep like she had, she decides.

This still isn't an event that matters though so she stands up, glances around until she finds a clock on the far wall. She has to squint to read it, but when she realizes the time she knows that hesitation (not that she would) isn't an option. She quickly heads for his kitchen and grabs his house key that she left there. She kicks his leg and when he moves the tiniest bit at the contact she says, "Hey." As his eyes open and begin to focus on her, she continues, "I'm leaving. Your key is right here, on the table."

He glances at the clock and groans as he shuts his eyes again, settling back on his couch, "Why'd you have to wake me? We have like an hour and half before needing to get up for school."

"Well I have cheer practice in forty minutes that I'm probably already going to be late for so I have to go," she explains irritated because this is wasting her time and Coach Sylvester isn't exactly keen on tardiness. She sighs and adds, "Besides if you're taking Kelyn to see your mom before school like you promised her, shouldn't you be getting up too?"

He groans again and moans as he opens his eyes again, "Crap."

As he begins to stand she makes for her exit. She concludes, "Tell Kelyn I said goodbye and to have fun at her dance. And tell her I said it last night, not this morning." She heads for the door, but just as she's in reach of the handle she realizes that this interaction was missing something that should be there. She turns around and tags on, "You know, if you tell anyone I was here I'm sure my god will forgive me for castrating you."

"I'll take that bet. Why don't we try and find out?" he returns. It's not like he's a complete ass. Okay, he kind of is and he does usually brag and if this happened with another girl he probably would let it be known that she spent the night at his house. She's different though. He doesn't feel like sharing about her, he doesn't ask himself why.

"I'm up for it if you are," she volleys and opens the door. "Bye," she shouts behind her as she leaves.

He thinks about all that's happened in the two minutes since he was woken up (and everything that did/didn't happen last night) for only about thirty seconds before Kelyn nosily comes bounding out of her room, eager to go see their mom. Thinking, has to wait after that.

-o-o-o-

She's never gotten ready for cheer practice so fast in her life, but at least she makes it on time. Plus, for possibly the first time ever she's really glad that her parents don't notice anything about her because if they did she probably would have gotten delayed by them this morning demanding to know where she had been all night. Instead they got up some time while she was taking the world's shortest shower, didn't realize she hadn't been there all night, and let her race out of the house with their typically fake-cheerful, "Good morning honey." She doesn't think about it again until she's leaving the house that night, her parents instantly believing she's being honest when she says she's going to dinner with her "girlfriends," but part of her does wish they'd find out about all her lies and actually care about everything she's done.

She does go to dinner with Santana and Brittney and a very carefully selected couple of other cheerleaders. As usual there's another orchard party tonight and the rest of the girls want to go. She plays along, but she really wishes that they had anywhere else to go, that something different would actually happen in this town.

For about the first hour that she's at the party she manages to forget about the one she was at exactly a week ago and what happened during it. She's too busy playing her usual role of Queen Bee to have time to think about it. It catches up with her though as the night goes on.

-o-o-o-

Puck dropped his sister off with his grandma for the weekend again. He had to work all weekend so it made sense. He did find out where his mom had hidden money, but he figured keeping his job a bit longer and adding to the money they had wouldn't hurt. Besides, his mom's boss had been really cool and let her keep her job, but wasn't letting her come back to work for a couple more weeks, just to make sure she was okay again, so in the long run the money could be necessary.

He can't work Friday night though, even though he tries to sweet talk his manager into letting him, but the lady's oddly resistant to his charms and when Finn asks if he can get a ride from him to the party he doesn't have a good reason to lie and skip it.

A little while after he gets to the party with Finn, as he's standing around talking to a few friends and taking his time with his first beer, he realizes that for the first time all day he doesn't have anything to worry about, anything to take care of, he's free. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but in the brief time he's realizing that he's free he sees Quinn across the orchard. He hadn't realized she was there and now he has a whole lot of other stuff to think about, only, by the friend he has next to him, he knows he can't. (The initial excitement about being free gets lost somewhere between realizing he's not really and realizing that he has to be.)

Finn notices that Quinn is there pretty soon after he does and proceeds to hesitate for the next forty-five longest minutes of his life, he swears. Eventually, inspiration striking, he grabs a wine cooler, hands it to Finn, and tells him to cowboy up and bring her a drink and just start talking to her if that's what he wants to do. Finn takes a couple deep breaths, but takes his advice (unfortunately), because apparently Finn does actually like her (unfortunately).

When Finn approaches Quinn she sends her girlfriends away (it's what's expected). After about a minute he holds the wine cooler out to Quinn, offering it to her as his best friend suggested (despite the fact that he was pretty sure Quinn didn't drink).

She looks at the bottle in his hand for a beat, brows furrowing trying to predict the chances. She takes it with a thank you and waits for Finn to get back to trying to talk about their Spanish class before she looks around, scanning the crowd for him. He's where she'd expect (the place she knew he was because he had been all night, but didn't let herself look first because even now she couldn't admit that she knew). He was still standing in the same place he'd been with Finn. He stops talking to the girl that's come up to him and meets her eyes. She doesn't look away and as if he knows the question in her head he nods, just once. He lifts his drink and takes a sip, his eyes not leaving hers. She twists off the cap of the wine cooler in her hand and takes a drink, her eyes not leaving his. He raises an eyebrow at her, can't resist the smirk that slides into place. She half shrugs in response; can't resist smiling at the surprised expression on his face because she's actually drinking the wine cooler (which was very clearly from him).

She's supposed to be talking to Finn, who is talking to her. He's not supposed to be ignoring the girl trying to talk to him, though chances were pretty good he would anyway--- she seemed pretty desperate, huge turn off. But instead of doing what they should have been, they're over a hundred feet away from each other having some silent conversation (best one either has had all night).

Maybe something would have happened. Maybe Finn would have caught on or Desperate Girl and called one or both of them out on it and they would have been forced to face the truth right then and there. Instead, flashing lights send everyone running. As Puck reaches his truck, hoping Finn's only seconds behind him, he realizes that it's never sucked more how people never listen to him about using their car headlights for light and not build a fire. Finn hops in the truck and tells him to drive and getting out of there without getting caught occupies his mind for a while.

Quinn gets to her car before any of the cheerleaders she gave a ride to despite the fact that she wasn't closest to the car. She's been telling them that they need to keep in better shape (as has Coach Sylvester). She briefly ponders leaving them all there to teach them that lesson. Then she ponders getting out of her car and staying herself, getting caught. If she did, everything in her life would probably change and the idea is mighty tempting (if she stayed she could become the type of girl that would be free to run to his car instead of hers). But all the girls are suddenly piling in her car and antsy to leave. She tells them to shut up, but drives away all the same.

Puck drops Finn off at some new party, but declines the invitation to stay, not telling his best friend the real reason he's doing so is because he has to be up in handful of hours to go to work. Finn tries to persuade him to stay, not understanding why he's so insistent on not doing so. But he scanned the cars as he drove up to the new party site, some senior's house, and her car's not there and it just doesn't feel like the party would be worth sacrificing more sleep for.

(While he sleeps that night, he has this dream replaying the events of the night. Only, when he's sitting in his truck, hand poised on the gear shift waiting to go the second Finn gets in, she gets in his truck instead. Smiling at him as she says, "Let's get out of here." He smiles back as he puts the truck in drive and leaves. Going God knows where, but then that doesn't really matter.)

-o-o-o-

She passes by him in the hallways at school. But this is school and they have certain ways they always act there. They always pass without acknowledgement, always acting like they don't even know that they're passing each other and they're good enough at pretending that not a single person seems to realize that they always notice.

As the school day comes to a close and she's faced with the prospect of heading home, Quinn tells herself that everything is the same. She gets to go back to doing things the same as she would before she was watching Kelyn and she should stick with that (it means too much if she doesn't). So she goes home, changes, tells her parents she's volunteer tutoring still and heads for Foster's.

(There's a moment that in her mind doesn't exist, where she sits in her car outside Foster's and doesn't move. She just sits there, not sure she's breathing, and wondering why this doesn't feel as right anymore.)

She plasters on a big smile when she goes into the bar and greets Foster, trying so hard to carry on like nothing is different. She chats with him for a few minutes, which is a nice distraction, and then she heads for her table and gets started on her homework as usual. She's determined enough that it only takes her five minutes- and her iPod- to get into her homework and ignore everything else.

She's tapping her foot and mouthing the words along to "Love Profusion" (she's been in a Madonna mood lately for some reason), as she works through some French exercises to prepare for her AP exam when a messy wad of money appearing on her notebook prevents her from continuing. She removes her headphones as her brow furrows. Looking up doesn't resolve her confusion because Puck is standing by her table.

"Ew, what are you listening to?" he asks as he snatches one of her earphones from the table where she dropped them (dropped being the operative word because they kind of slid from her hand unnoticed when she realized it was him who was interrupting her).

Him taking her property and insulting her music selection brings her wits back to her. As he's bringing the earphone towards his ear for a closer listen she snatches the cord back roughly and declares, "It's Madonna and it's good."

"Psh, it's not even good for chick music," he counters.

She's tempted to argue that Madonna is one of the best musical artists of their time, but she probably won't change his mind and it won't get her any answers about why he's here or what the money's about. She sighs, resists the urge to argue, and questions as she unfolds the wad of money, "What is this for?"

"Kelyn's dinners," he says as if it should be obvious. Before she can say something about not paying her back now he adds, "I found where my mom hid that money so I figured I'd pay you now, get it over with."

There's no real reason for them to ever interact again after this. She's thought about it before, which she won't admit, but him paying her was the only time she knew they'd ever be alone together again and he was getting it over with so soon. Though she knows it means all that, she doesn't want to know it. She points out as she smoothes the bills, "You paid too much. Foster and Addie didn't let me pay for Kelyn or myself some nights." She slides a few of the bills toward the end of the table where he's standing rather than trying to hand them back to him.

He picks up the money, stuffs it back in his pocket. He hesitates for a second, but slides into the both across from her as he says, "I'm supposed to write you some letter too, right? What's it supposed to say?"

"I already wrote it for you," she says as she takes out her binder and finds it easily (she's very organized) as she tries not to think about the fact that he just sat down with her. She hands it over to him and instructs, "All you have to do is sign it."

"Well I have to read it first, can't sign anything without reading it," he says teasingly because he already saw the first line. He reads aloud, "Quinn Fabray is the most compassionate young woman I've ever met." He stops reading, glances up at her and questions, "Hmm….that doesn't sound right. What kind of compassionate young woman draws pornographic pictures of her female classmates on the stalls in the girls' bathroom?"

"I did not," she denies, straight faced and unflinchingly. He raises an eyebrow at her questioningly and she can't help it, she caves. She's smiling as she demands, "How did you know that?"

"Have my ways," he says vaguely (Santana goes off into revealing jealous rants sometimes). "Plus," he adds, "I'm an admirer of your work… especially its accuracy."

"You would be," she says with a roll of her eyes, trying to ignore how good she feels right here, right now.

He steals her pen that's lying right by her right hand and signs the letter she had typed up before she can blink. He slides the paper back over to her, rolling the pen back towards her after it.

"So you were just screwing with me pretending like you wouldn't definitely sign it?" she asks as she picks it up and puts it safely back in her binder.

"Yep," he confirms, "I don't really give a crap what it says." He knows he needs to say something else to her, something that's been nagging at him. He's been trying his best to ignore it because he really, really doesn't want to have to acknowledge it, but if he gets it over with maybe he can forget about all of this. He adds, "Besides, I kind of owe you big, for everything."

She's a smart girl and even if she'll tell herself that she was just following the natural course of the conversation, she knows she's taking advantage of the presented opportunity. She responds, "Yeah, you do. What are going to do about that?"

"Well I'm definitely not going to pay you. You have plenty of money, I don't, so that rules that out," Puck answers, because the only thing he'd thought of so far didn't seem right if he didn't first warn that he wasn't going to pay her like a normal babysitter.

"I agree," Quinn comments, "you shouldn't pay me." She tries to think of a suggestion of something he could do, but everything she can think of would mean way more than she's comfortable with.

"I could teach you something," he offers, hand tapping on his leg just a little because he's aware that teaching could take time, a lot of it.

She laughs, she likes the suggestion, but it sounds a little ridiculous. "Right," she says doubtfully, "_You're_ going to teach _me_ something? How do you figure that will work with your what? D average and my straight A's."

"I wasn't talking school work, nerd. I mean something useful," he counters. He suggests, "Like football or baseball."

"Yeah, those are useful," she mocks. But she doesn't want to say no either so she adds, "What makes you think that I don't already know how to play both of those or that I'm not better than you?"

"You're a girl," he answers simply.

She rolls her eyes and agrees, "Fine. But when I prove that I don't need to be taught how to play, it doesn't count as you having taught me something so you'll still owe me. Agreed?"

"Yep," he agrees easily and he doesn't really care if she noticed what she did, but he's glad that her terms meant the possibility of even more time together. "Alright, I'm pretty sure I have a football and all my baseball equipment in my trunk. Let's go."

"Wait," she says stopping him and finally realizing why something was off about all of this, "Where's Kelyn and why aren't you at work?"

He stops in his movement to get up and settles back in the booth. He prefaces, "Okay, first with Kelyn I was right and with work they deserved it."

"What did you do?" Quinn half demands, half inquires worriedly.

"Well with work that real tool assistant manager got promoted to manager Saturday because our other manager, a lady, was sleeping with this other lady we worked with and they both got fired. Which isn't as hot as it sounds, they were ug-o's. But this guy is a real bastard and he was there like all day Saturday and Sunday and so yesterday he tries to deny us bathroom breaks so to get back at him I may have…relieved myself in the fryolater," Puck explains.

"You peed in their deep fryer?" Quinn clarifies, mostly disgusted at the idea, but just a little bit appreciative of the boldness of it.

"Yeah," Puck confirms, and he can't help feeling good about it because it was really satisfying to see that jackass' face when he caught him peeing in the fryolater.

She shakes her head, but doesn't comment on it because, really, what does one say to that? She asks, "And Kelyn?"

His mood shifts from proud and satisfied to agitated and angry, "Kelyn's at a guy's house."

"What?" Quinn exclaims.

"Yeah, some guy named Jamie who she became 'really good friends with' at whatever stupid dance they had last week. Then his mom calls me today and asks to set up a play date for them. She says she does it all the time, likes having her son's friends over or something. But who would like having a bunch of annoying nine year-olds around all the time? Something's not right with this whole thing. But Kel really wanted to go so I agreed and I dropped her off there right after school," he rants on and stops abruptly.

She doesn't know when it happened (and won't admit that she can), but she can read him. Feeling like there's something more to the story she prompts, "And then?"

"Well, I can't just let her go into the house of people I haven't met, right? I know my mom wouldn't let her do that. But she didn't want me to come and ran off to the back yard as soon as the mother who opened the door said that's where _Jamie_ was. And the lady was nice, I guess. She had a few questions since it was me talking to her and dropping Kelyn off and not our mom, and you know, why would Kelyn tell her son to call me instead of our mom? Which I guess is something normal to wonder. So I told her the same lie my mom made up for Kelyn so she can't mess Kel up about it. But then she was kind of kicking me out of the house, saying she had stuff to get back to, like right after that. And it was suspicious, right? So I went out to my truck but I didn't leave. So like twenty minutes later she comes out and asks if something's wrong and I told her no and then she said that the kids were just in the back playing, I could leave. And shouldn't she be offering to let me stay? You know? It seemed like she was really trying to get me out of there. So I left, but I only went like half a block away on the other side of the street and then she has Kelyn call me and Kel says that she can still see me and I'm embarrassing her, which is ridiculous, but I did what she claimed she wanted, but I'm sure it was that weird mother making her do, and I left," Puck rants. What kind of parent doesn't let the guardian of a kid they have over stay and watch the kids play if they want to? Or at least let them stay near by?

"And you managed to tear yourself away and come all the way out here?" Quinn questions a bit teasingly because this whole leaving Kelyn at a friend's house who's a boy clearly has him flustered.

He actually manages to look just a little bit guilty as he admits, "Actually, they live in that new development that's way out here. It's only like three miles away."

"Of course," she says glancing down at the table and pulling the right corner of her lower lip between her teeth, trying not to smile because his overprotectiveness was making him just a little bit…different, wishing that what they were could be different. "So did she tell you anything about this Jamie boy?" she asks, knowing what she's doing to him (and knowing what effect keeping him in this state has on her---clinging to it just a little bit longer).

His jaw clenches and his fists tighten as he as he responds, "Yeah, said something about him being really funny or something." He looks like he tries to resist, but it only last a few seconds before he can't anymore and he's raving, "Which you know guys only do to get a girl's attention- trying to be funny. That's like, the best way to get a girl when you're nine. Get them laughing, then get them playing, then get them involved in some version of playing doctor."

"Maybe for you," Quinn says, knowing she's probably right. She decides to put him out of his clear misery though (and she has no idea why, especially when she had been enjoying the little flutter it induced), "But you know, not all nine year old boys are like that. Kelyn's a good kid, she wouldn't hang out with a boy like that and even if she found herself with one, she is _your_ sister, I'm sure she'd be fine."

The clenching of his jaw and fists eases and Puck admits, "I guess I kind of have been teaching her how to fight since she was three so she could definitely beat his ass if he tries anything."

She smiles, "See, she'll be fine."

He smiles just a little, soft and just a tiny hint of shyness because this is about his sister.

(She realizes why she decided to end his misery. This- the tiny little smile that the truths she pointed out to him by knowing him caused. She's the reason he feels better in this moment and that's not insignificant.)

"So when are you supposed to pick her up?" Quinn questions as a start to change the subject and get them out of this place where she's just…(feeling).

He glances at the wall in back of her and answers, "In like forty-five more minutes."

"That should be plenty of time for me to not only prove to you that I know how to play football and baseball, but that I'm also better than you at both," Quinn says as she pushes her books aside and neatly piles them.

"Psh, right. Bring it, cheerleader," he challenges as he stands up from the booth.

-o-o-o-

Fifty minutes later they're still out behind the bar in the clearing before the field. Apparently Foster and Addie owned the two hundred acres surrounding the bar, their house was even on the far side of it, and he gave them permission to wander on back and settle whatever they were doing.

What they were doing turned out to be confirming that Quinn was right. In the fifty minutes they had found out that Quinn could throw short passes, long passes, and still hit her target (Puck) when practicing a play with the football. He was disgruntled, but quickly moved on to baseball in hopes of her being horrible at it. Unfortunately for him, Quinn hit ever pitch he threw her and he missed nearly ever one she threw him.

After hitting one of her pitches, but missing the last four, Puck angrily chucked his own bat deep into the field of potato plants. "This isn't happening," Puck declares.

"Oh it is," Quinn assures with a happy, victorious smile.

"I'm out of practice," Puck offers an excuse, though it doesn't really make him feel any better about losing to a girl.

"Right," Quinn says doubtfully, "I thought baseball season doesn't end for a few more weeks?" As she's saying it, she realizes that it's actually a question because he's on the baseball team and she is pretty sure their season isn't over, and yet, he's here.

"I had to quit, few weeks ago," he answers shortly as he heads for the field to get his bat back.

She feels stupid now because of course he had to quit. Who would watch Kelyn if he was at practice and their mom wasn't around? She could watch her, but things were different a few weeks ago when he would have been faced with that choice. Things were different now; that hangs in her head. She doesn't want to think about that though so she gets back to the initial point of why they were out here. She yells after him, "You know, nothing you say will change the fact that I beat you."

He returns from the field, pointing the now found bat at her and smirking as he says confidently, "That won't be true for long." He takes position back where he had been when she had been pitching to him and prepares for another swing. Before she can pitch though, his phone starts ringing and he drops the bat and answers as soon as he recognizes the number on the screen (it was a new one that had already called him once today). "Yeah, I'm on my way, two minutes," he promises. He hangs up and swears, "Shit." He grabs the football off the ground and catches the ball she tosses to him (she's already caught on) as he says, "Kelyn. Can't believe I'm late."

He's racing for his truck before she can take a step back in the direction of the bar and by the time she gets there, he's already speeding out of the parking lot.

She goes back inside and gets back to her schoolwork. She tries not to notice the curious looks Foster gives her. She tells herself that it was a good day, because being better than him was fun, but that it was over and her life would, thankfully, go back to normal.

A few hours later, as she's packing her bag resigned to going home earlier than she had been the past couple of weeks, she gets a text and it's from him (pops up as N.P. on her phone--- she didn't know what to label him and didn't want anything anyone could know). He wrote simply: _Tomorrow guitar_. It has her scrunching her forehead in thought for a second before it leaves her smiling the entire way home, most of the night, and the whole next day (ever time she thinks about it). He's planned on seeing her again, apparently to teach her guitar now and she can't pretend anymore that she's not thrilled that her life isn't going to go back to normal soon.

-o-o-o-

Quinn races home after school and hurriedly changes into the outfit that's hanging at the front of her closet (she picked it out earlier, but totally not for today specifically, not really). She knows that he has to pick Kelyn up and possibly do some other things so she'll be waiting for him and there's therefore no logical reason to rush, but she practically runs right back out of her house and speeds the whole way to Foster's.

As soon as she steps foot into Foster's, she knows something is different today. This thought is soon confirmed as Addie comes through the door to the kitchen greeting, "Hi honey."

"Addie," she returns, stunned. It was nearly four and according to Foster, Addie never missed _Oprah_. Something was definitely up. "What's going on here?" Quinn questions, hoping it isn't anything serious so she's not being intrusive.

Addie sighs tiredly and explains, "You know Joe Russo? He's a truck driver, always stops in when he's coming this way, you've probably seen him in here before. Anyway, we've known him a long time and he likes to bring us business when he comes this way with anyone or he's always recommending us to people, which we appreciate of course. But about a half hour ago he called and said, "Get ready for some company." He's on his way to Port Clinton with a whole caravan of people, he said they have over a dozen car full's and they'll be passing this way and stopping here for dinner in a couple of hours. I'm not sure we can even fit that many people or that we have enough food to feed them. I had to truck over a bunch of food from the house and Fos is out on a store run right now."

Addie sounded stressed and already looked tired despite the fact that anyone had yet to arrive. Both her and Foster had been really good to her and she always felt like she owed them. Since this opportunity presented itself, Quinn offered, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Well," Addie begins, looking like she doesn't want to say whatever she's going to say, "We'll probably need your table when they get here. We can find somewhere else for you to work though. If you don't mind the noise then you can work at the bar and if you need somewhere quite you can come over to the house, no one will be there to bother you."

"It's fine," Quinn assures, "I don't really have much work to do at all." Actually, Quinn had had quite a bit of work, but she multi-tasked in her classes to get it finished before school was even out just in case guitar lessons ended up taking up most of her day. She offers again since Addie didn't really ask anything of her, "Is there anything I can help you with for when they get here or while they're here?"

"Thank you dear, but we'll be fine," Addie says with a smile, but not really sounding like she's sure it's true.

"But I owe you for all the free meals and for always letting me be here so I don't have to be home. Are you sure I can't help in some way?" Quinn insists.

"Well," Addie drawls. She pauses and considers it for a minute more and finally admits, "I could probably use a hand in the kitchen and serving if you wouldn't mind."

"No problem," Quinn quickly assures, "I'd love to help."

"Thank you," Addie says sincerely. She sighs again and grabs a towel from the top of the bar, wipes at the nothingness there for a second before wringing it in her hands.

Quinn simply stands there and waits. She figured she'd be put to work now.

Addie realizes that Quinn's still there and remembers that she left out some vital information. "Oh," she says recalling, "we can't get started really until Fos gets back with the rest of the food so you can get to that homework if you want." As Quinn heads for her usual booth, Addie adds on just a bit quitter, "Or call Puck and let him know the change in plans."

Quinn sets her bag down on the bench of the booth and turns around and questions, "What?" She wasn't sure she heard right. Addie hadn't been there yesterday to see that Puck had shown up despite the fact that she wasn't watching Kelyn. Although Foster was there and, being married, could have easily told Addie. Still, she didn't think Addie would just come out and say something like that, not when she had only been heavily hinting so far.

"Can you manage here by yourself for a few minutes dear? It's unlikely, but if a customer comes in just tell them I'll be back in a minute. I'm going to head home and grab you an apron. I'd hate for you helping me in the kitchen to lead to that pretty dress getting ruined," Addies says, changing the subject and heading for the back door before Quinn could answer.

Of course Quinn had no problem staying there and covering for Addie if need be, but that didn't really answer her question. Plus, the mention of her dress kind of sounded like the usual veiled hint that both Addie and Foster were frequently guilty of making lately.

After Addie leaves, Quinn thinks about what she thought Addie said. Maybe she should call Puck and let him know that she was going to help Addie and Foster. She had wanted guitar lessons (she told herself it was because she always wanted to learn how to play), but this was more important. They had provided her with a safe place to escape to and she was so grateful to them for that alone, but they had also been genuinely kind and generous to her and she wanted to return the favor as much as possible. If she called Puck though, he wouldn't come there and she wouldn't see him today. But if he showed up and she knew that she couldn't get lessons from him today, then she would have caused him to drive all the way out here out of his way.

As Quinn was trying to decide whether or not calling Puck or not calling Puck was the right thing to do, but tried to focus on revising her completed homework in case Addie came back (since Addie thought she actually had homework), Puck showed up.

Puck trudges in empty handed and calls from across the room, "Hey."

"Hey," she returns, wondering why he's not carrying a guitar and where Kelyn is. She considers the possibilities that she knows of that could explain why he's there without Kelyn. One in particular is interesting and she questions with a smirk, "Kelyn's not spending another afternoon with that boy, is she?"

"Yes," he answers tightly as he plops down into the booth across from her.

She puts down her pen and simply sits and waits for the rest to be explained.

He doesn't want to have to even think about the fact that his little sister was ready to pitch a fit when he just hesitated to say yes to letting her go to _that boy's_ house again. He addresses the other issue rather than elaborating on his sister, "I don't have my guitar." He realizes that that sounded like he was just stating the obvious and quickly continues, "I loaned it out for a week, to my neighbor, he paid me to let him borrow it. But he said he'll bring it back tonight so…". He trails off, not really knowing what to say. He both wants and doesn't want to suggest that he teach her how to play starting tomorrow. And he feels like maybe he should come up with an excuse and get out of here. What does it say about him if he stays when he obviously has no reason to at the moment?

"That works out well," Quinn comments after it's clear that he's not going to finish his sentence. With his interest perked, eyebrow's jumping just a bit, she explains, "Addie and Foster just found out that a big crowd will be showing up here tonight and they've done so much for me so I volunteered to help out."

"Oh," Puck says, not knowing how to react. Did she intentionally make plans to do something else while they were supposed to be doing something together or did she really just feel like helping them took precedence over their plans? Was she into them actually doing something or was she looking for excuses not to? Was he just supposed to leave now that something else was going on?

Quinn doesn't know what possesses her to do it. She'll tell herself that she's just making the obvious connection that he's not smart enough to notice and in doing so she's just doing him a favor in some Christian-induced spirit. (Really, it's much simpler than that. She just wanted him to stay.) Since it's been a beat and he's not taking the opportunity to bolt, she mentions, "You don't like owing people anything right? That's why you're going to teach me something?" She doesn't wait for him to respond (doesn't really want to know if that's the only reason he's here right now, because he owes her) and suggests, "Maybe you could pay Addie and Foster back for their kindness to you the same way I am. I'm sure they could use more help. I've never seen Addie so frazzled."

"Yeah, until I have to pick up Kelyn, sure," Puck finds himself saying before giving the suggestion a second of thought.

It's quite enough in there, between them, eyes connected, breathing stopped, that they hear Foster's angry swear from the direction of the parking lot easily. "God dammit," is proceeded by a thud.

Puck jumps up and heads for the door, Quinn on his heals. They find a couple of bags of spilt groceries scattered on the messy asphalt before the door and Foster on his knees cleaning up. Puck immediately starts helping pick the contents of the bags up, while Quinn has to be a little more careful as her dress isn't short, but also not meant for kneeling or squatting to pick things up.

"Thanks guys," Foster says gratefully, "stupid bags broke."

"No problem," Puck dismisses. With his arms full of groceries now, he asks, "Where do you want this stuff? The kitchen?"

"Yeah. Just put it anywhere in there. No matter where I say Addie will just want it somewhere different in there anyway," Foster answers.

Quinn picks up a few more things and heads toward the kitchen, quite a few strides behind Puck and with Foster just behind her. "From what Addie said it sounds like you're going to packed tonight," Quinn says conversationally.

"Yep. Probably going to feel weird to have so many people here now. Got used to just having a few good regulars," Foster admits.

As they're all coming back out of the kitchen to head to Foster's truck to help him with the rest of his purchases they run into Addie who finally returned with an apron for Quinn. She has Quinn put it on right away to avoid risking her dress getting messed up and Puck laughs at her once she's put it on (honestly, he never knew an apron could look that good though). It takes a bit for Puck to convince Addie and Foster to let him help to pay them back for all the free meals they've given him and his sister. It also takes a bit for Foster to accept that Addie already agreed to let Quinn help. Addie and Foster end up oblivious to the two teens for a while as they fight about whether or not they need help, if she should have let Quinn help, if they should let Puck help, and finally what each of them should help with first.

Puck and Quinn eventually tire of standing by and listening and head to the bar, unnoticed, to sit and wait. They play paper football, which it turns out is a form of football Quinn can't do at all as she just can't seem to flick the paper to get it to go anywhere. Frustrated by the fact that she's apparently incapable of something as purposeless (and that Puck can do) as paper football, Quinn finally interjects in their fight as they're arguing about what they should be doing and suggests, "How about one of you is in charge of what one of us does and the other is in charge of the other one of us and you can't interfere with each other or each other's…help at all."

"Good idea," Addie declares, turning back to her husband and waiting his agreement.

"Fine," he relents. "Someone making a logical suggestion to our fighting. Doesn't that remind you of Jake?" Foster questions his wife fondly.

"It's like he's here and speaking through Quinn," Addie agrees. For the two teens who clearly have no idea what they're talking about she adds, "Jake's our oldest son. And the only one who was responsible and level headed from an early age. He's always been the voice of reason." She smiles affectionately at her husband, remembering the family they raised together. She sighs and gets back to the moment at hand, "Okay, let's get to work. Quinn, you're with me." She gestures Quinn over to her and to follow her into the kitchen.

Quinn follows and as she's led to the kitchen by Addie and she can hear Foster telling Puck that they have things that need fixing outside, she can't help the thought that she'll tell herself never existed that maybe she shouldn't have spoken up at all.

-o-o-o-

Addie told Quinn that nearly every dish they served involved potatoes in some way, so get peeling. Peeling was all Quinn had done for the entire time she had been helping Addie, which was for practically an hour now. (An hour that she hadn't seen Puck during once. She didn't know what time he was supposed to pick up Kelyn and she wondered, while trying to only think of the task at hand, if he was still there, if he would say goodbye before he left, if whatever course of action he took would mean anything.)

"Regret offering to help yet?" Addie questions good-naturedly and pulling Quinn from her troubling thoughts.

"Of course not," she swears with a smile, but seriously, she felt like she had peeled enough potatoes to last her a lifetime.

"Well that looks like it should be enough potatoes so you can make that your last one," Addie declares. After Quinn finishes the potato she was peeling and puts it with the rest of the ones she peeled, Addie hauls over a rather large bowl of onions. She asks, "Can you cut these next? We'll need about a quarter of them for onion rings, a quarter of them for sandwiches and burgers, and the other half finely chopped to be cooked into different things."

It was another task that she wouldn't typically want to do, but she did want to help and this was what was needed so Quinn agreed with a smile, "Sure."

"Thank you honey. Can't handle cutting onions myself. I usually have to have Foster do it for me," Addie says gratefully, a bit of sadness in her voice as she returned to her task of prepping a roast for the oven.

"They make you cry?" Quinn guessed. She hadn't cut many onions herself and they had made her eyes water the tiniest bit on occasion, but she'd never cried from cutting one. She had heard they make lots of people cry though.

"Yes," Addie confirmed the sadness no longer just a hint in her voice. She feels her lip quiver and she knows what may soon come to pass as the room will increasingly smell like onions. And she's never been one to bottle things up and shove them away anyway, so she sighs and admits, "But it's not whatever's in the onions so much. It's… it's…a memory. I miscarried while cutting an onion once."

Quinn could hear the tears in the older woman's voice and she watched as her face crumpled in misery and lost all it's usual joy. She wanted to say something. She wanted to offer some substitute so she wouldn't be cutting up something that incited a heartbreaking memory. But she didn't know what to say to make it any better and Addie continued talking anyway.

"I was at my mother's house, in her kitchen," she recalled, "I was making dinner for the family, meatloaf. I was cutting an onion and then… No one else was there yet and all I kept thinking was how it was all my fault. I was only nineteen and in the five months I had been pregnant all I could think was that we weren't ready for another kid. We couldn't handle it and then…she was gone." Her voice broke over the words, the few tears that were always there for this, just beneath the surface, spilt over and she sniffled before continuing, "As much as you don't want a memory like that to stick with you, it does, every part of it. I couldn't walk into my mother's kitchen for five years after that. It took over fifteen years before I made a meatloaf again. But the onions, I remember the entire time it was happening that the smell of the onion was overwhelming and ever since, smelling them always brings me back to being collapsed on my mother's kitchen floor, alone, and…losing her."

Addie swipes at her tears with her hands, wipes her hand on her apron, sighs and picks up an apple. As she starts peeling it she manages a small smile towards Quinn.

"I'm sorry," Quinn says, not knowing what else to say but still wanting to say something. She feels a lot like crying herself and she knows that it doesn't have anything to do with the onion she's cutting.

"Oh honey it's alright," Addie promises. She shakes her head and says as she continues her task, "It's one awful memory that sneaks up on me sometimes. But I'm lucky enough that I have thousands more memories that are fantastically good that can pull me back from all the sadness it brings." Always chatty, Addie rambles on with only the briefest of pauses, "In fact I'm luckier than most people because I've gotten to spend fifty-two years married to my one true love."

Quinn smiles at that because it's nice to see people who are married and happy. Her parents were never an example of that. Yet that statement also reminds her of earlier questions she had so she dives in since Addie has taken a breath and isn't talking. "Fifty-two years?" she questions.

"That's right," Addie exclaims as she starts chopping the apples she just finished peeling, "I never told you the story." She smiles recalling it and begins, "Well,…" she pauses. Her mood switches suddenly and she warns, "Now, I don't usually tell this story to young people and now that I think about it, it could be sending a very bad message. If you promise not to do anything I did then I suppose I could still tell you it though?"

"I won't do anything you did, I promise," Quinn says easily. She had no idea what Addie could be talking about so it was an easy enough promise to make, especially for the sake of answering her many questions.

"Okay," Addie accepts. Her nostalgic smile returns as she transfers her apples to a pot and she remembers, "I was fifteen when I met Foster and he was eighteen. I knew right away that he was the one and I wanted to marry him, but I waited until we had been dating about six months until I told anyone that, including him. It turned out he felt the same way and we didn't want to wait to get married until I legally could- he was nineteen by this point so he didn't need his parents permission like I did. I only had one parent to convince though, my mom. My daddy had died when I was eight, car accident. Anyway, I went to my mom, with Foster, and I told her we wanted to be married and I needed her signed consent. She basically said hell no. Foster was older, rode a motorcycle, had long hair, and was kind of a rebel. And I was fifteen. My older sister was on her side too and we had always been as close as sisters could be. It hurt, them thinking I had lost my mind to want forever with him to start then. But more than it hurt it made me really, really angry. How could they not understand what kind of pain they were inflicting on me to make me wait? How could they tell me that I was wrong in thinking that I wanted to spend my life with him?" She lifts her knife she was using to cut up chicken breasts and warns, "Now this is the part of the story that you don't copy, right?" When Quinn nods in agreement she sighs and continues, "Being angry and hurt, I went to Foster for comfort of course. It had been a week since we went to my mother for permission and ever since then my mother and sister had been constantly trying to convince me that he wasn't right for me and that I didn't really love him. And I was so mad and….now, I had been planning on waiting for my wedding night to lose my virginity like a good girl. But since they were keeping me from having a wedding night and since Foster making me feel better about them had turned into making out and heavy petting in the back seat of his car, I figured, why wait? And I think somewhere in the back of my mind I knew exactly what I was doing when I decided that and when I decided that it would be okay that we didn't have any protection and I wasn't on any birth control. So I ended up pregnant by the time I was sixteen and it was different times then. Marriage at a young age was preferable to a single knocked up teenaged daughter. Foster's father nearly beat the life out of him when he found out, he was a very…strict man. But we got rushed to the alter just after my sixteenth birthday and not too long after that we became parents."

Quinn finishes the onions and Addie hands over a bowl, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots so she can prepare the base of the salads. After she digs all that out and returns to her work on the chicken, Addie continues, "And fifty-two years later we're still together, we have three wonderful sons and one beautiful daughter all grown up, seven grand children, and one great grand baby on the way. We're lucky it worked out so well."

Quinn smiles at that. They really were lucky (she had a feeling she wouldn't be lucky like them). She bites her lip because despite all the information that had been crammed into Addie's story (she could tell she told it all the time, all the words seemed stuck in her head), there was one still lingering in Quinn's mind.

"What?" Addie questions. She caught the look on Quinn's face and she's been telling her real life love story for a very long time, she knew what a face like that meant when it was over. There was still something the girl wanted to know.

Quinn can't keep it in anymore, not with having been prompted to ask it. She bursts, "How could you know? You were fifteen and I was fifteen last year… just a few months ago actually. I can't imagine…being certain of anything. How could you know that Foster was the one for you?"

Addie smiled. Quinn had asked the most common question she got after telling that story. Other people who had found love knew the answer and never asked, but she knew Quinn wasn't one of those people (as far as the girl was aware yet, but Addie had hoped awareness was just around the corner). She answered, "You just know when you meet the right person. It sounds too simple, but that's the way it is. Even those people who don't want to fall in love for whatever reason--- fear, not wanting to let someone in, bad timing, whatever--- on some level, in some part of them, even they know when they've met the right person. Something just clicks into place and of all the futures you've ever dreamt of, none of them seem right without that person. And Foster, he was _so_ immature. That could lead him to be reckless in the worst ways and there were times that his immaturity would lead him to do something so awful that I would consider leaving him. But from the very beginning I knew that I'd never be able to leave because no matter what he did, due to this worst part of him, it wouldn't make me stop loving him. And the same was true of him. He loved all the good things about me, but none of the bad things were things that would ever make him walk away. And one of the things that made it clear that it was right was that when his immaturity would hurt me he'd try to change because hurting me was the last thing he wanted to do and visa versa for the things I did that hurt him. It didn't always work. We didn't always succeed in changing. But we tried and that's what really mattered--- when you're willing to make any sacrifices for another person, it means a lot. He was willing to change his world completely and marry me and I was willing to do the same. That's what really made me certain that he was the one, because we were both willing to change everything we knew to start a life together."

As Quinn listened to Addie's wise answer, she wondered if she'd ever be able to say the same thing from her own experience. She highly doubted she ever would. Something had just always nagged at her, in the back of her mind, telling her that she wouldn't get to find someone she'd be willing to do anything for or that would make her feel like she was whole. She'd been resigned to the idea of always having that part missing, that person who was her other half, since she was eight and made her Barbies have arranged marriages (it was easier than creating a love story to just skip right to the wedding).

Reading people pretty well had always been a gift of Addie's and as she glanced up from her task and saw Quinn's thoughtful look as she sliced a cucumber, she had a fairly confident guess what the girl was thinking. She promises with a smile, "You're going to find your own Foster someday, your one and only."

"I hope so," Quinn agrees softly. And she does hope that when she's off somewhere far from here in college she does meet someone that feels right. Only, part of her knows that she'll probably settle like her mother. Hopefully she won't settle on someone as incompatible as her father was for her mother, but settle for someone less than the one because she has plans for her life and she can't wait for _the one _forever and if he doesn't show up at the right time then she's going to end up with a second best (and she's hoping for nothing less than second).

Settling is hopefully a future that is far from now though and, anyway, she hasn't particularly felt like thinking of the future lately. So, Quinn changes the subject and starts asking Addie what she finds so enjoyable about watching Oprah and about other things about the other woman's life (so she doesn't have to think about her own.)

-o-o-o-

Meanwhile, Puck had started his time helping out by being told by Foster that the sign over the bar needed fixing. It hadn't been lighting up for a few weeks, but since they'll have people looking for the place, possibly in the dark, it's probably about time that finally got fixed. Puck was then led around the bar by Foster looking for a ladder, but after a lap he realized that he must not have one there anymore. Their task then took a turn as it became to go to Foster's house and get the needed ladder, but since they were going to be there they might as well grab "the other stuff" from the basement.

Puck had no idea what other stuff Foster was expecting him to help with in the basement and the whole idea of having to do something in someone's middle-of- nowhere house, in their basement, seemed pretty creepy. But Puck went along with it because he figured that Foster had to be at least in his late sixties and he could totally take an old-guy if need be--- after all, when it came to fighting, he was undefeated (mostly).

Puck had never been a big talker and he was glad when the walk to Foster's house was progressing without conversation. He figured that being a bartender Foster had to be good at bull shitting with people, but for whatever reason that he wasn't doing it now, he was enjoying the lack of conversation.

As the house seemed close enough that it'd only be a minute more walk though, Foster seemed to remember that their wasn't just conversation to be made, but things he actually wanted to know. He asked, "Oh yeah, where's Kelyn been at these last couple days? Your mom's not back yet right?"

"No, she's not," Puck answers slowly, confused about how Foster knew his mom was away in the first place. Had that been his original excuse to them about why he was taking care of his sister in the first place? He could have sworn they knew a vague version of the truth.

Foster notices Puck's pause of confusion and offers, "Quinn ran out of here with Kelyn pretty fast last Thursday. We were worried and she doesn't always come by on Friday's but she stopped by just to let us know everything was fine, let us know why she ran out and you didn't come for your sister so we could stop worrying."

"Oh," Puck responds. He's not sure what to do with that. He supposes it's nice that they care that much, but he wonders if it's weird, or if it means anything that Quinn went all the way back to them just to talk about him and his sister. These things are much more confusing to think about than the things that usually occupy his mind so Puck tries to rid them by responding to Foster's other question, "Yeah, my mom should be back Friday. She just decided a week at rehab should be helpful and then regular therapy from now on. But Kel's at a friend's house. She became really good friends with some kid in her class at the end of last week and she's been invited to spend afternoon's there today and yesterday."

They reach the house and as Foster opens the door and holds it open for Puck, he chuckles and guesses by Puck's agitated tone, "Her friend's a boy?"

"Yeah," Puck confirmed, both surprised Foster had guessed and the anger seeping through in his tone again.

Foster chuckles again, "That's the hardest. I remember when my daughter made her first friend that was a boy. She was only six and they were way too young to even consider each other in a romantic way, but I was ready to beat the kid if he touched her. And when she started dating it was so much worse. Good luck with that. Dating is only a few short years away."

"Great," Puck drawls sarcastically. He's thought about that before and he's really not looking forward to it. He follows Foster down to the basement and once down he notices that it is full of alcohol.

"After we got our liquor license taken away we still had a lot of stock so…here it went. I've got to get rid of it somehow though so I figure I'll just have to give some away. I'm pretty sure that as long as I'm not selling it it'll be legal. Just in case though I'm only bringing some wine back. I'm looking for both reds and whites so you start on that side of the boxes, I'll be over here, holler if you find it," Foster instructs.

About ten minutes of digging through box after box, moving box after box and re-stacking them, Puck comes to a stop as he finds quite a few boxes of wine coolers. One container in particular had a ton of Bartles and Jaymes Strawberry Daiquiri's in it- the same kind he'd given to Quinn twice, the kind she actually started to drink once.

As Puck is staring in the case and remembering how good last Friday night seemed if only for a bit, he doesn't notice when Foster comes up beside him. Foster startles him when he asks, "You like those?"

No, he doesn't. He thinks they taste horrible. But on the other hand, _they're _not horrible. "Well," he begins and pauses because he's not much for talking and he doesn't feel like it now either. "Yeah," he settles on simply.

"Someone told me wine coolers would be big sellers with a younger crowd, but they weren't as much as the hard stuff and beer and then I got shut down and stuck with tons of them. I don't feel good about giving them to a sixteen year old, especially one who's always driving around his little sister these days, but if I can't get rid of them in a while and you still want them, I guess I can give you some. At least they wouldn't be filling up my basement then and you probably find other ways to drink anyway right? If I remember being sixteen correctly," Foster reasons.

"Yeah," Puck agrees, "you really don't need to supply me. I've got tons of methods."

"Well, can't say I'm happy to hear that, but not surprised either. Like I said, I was sixteen too. And you deserve to have your fun," Foster shows him the box of wine he was looking for and hands it over to Puck to carry. As they start back up the stairs he continues, "Growing up comes soon enough and you seem like you've already had to do your fair share of it too early, so a little fun doesn't hurt. As long as you never drink and drive. You don't, do you?"

"Nope," Puck promises, "I just walk a ways home sometimes."

"Good. That's one thing I made sure of when I was serving minors, or anyone really, if I thought they had too much, I took their car keys. I have a lot of ways of getting someone's car keys from them actually, but it's not a very useful skill anymore," Foster rambles. With the box of wine by the door ready to go and the ladder somewhere outside, Foster takes a look around his house trying to remember what else they needed from here.

While Foster looks around for inspiration, Puck takes a look at the house for the first time since he got there. It's not a very big house. Probably only about twice the size of his family's apartment, but it definitely feels like a home- with pictures of family everywhere and a sense of warmth and memories floating about.

"Oh, my tool box, that was it," Foster catches on and heads down a hallway and into a closet. Foster piles the tool box on the box of wine and asks as he does so, "Are you good with tools? Do you know any trades?"

"Not really," Puck answers honestly, "I fix my truck myself, but only because I can't afford to take it anywhere to get it fixed and I'm only guessing when I do stuff to it, have no idea how long it's going to hold up."

"Well I can help you with that," Foster offers, "I've always fixed all of our cars. That was probably the only thing I got from my dad that actually stuck with me for the better. He was a military man and tough as nails, mostly on my and my brother. And speaking of, my brother can teach you a trade too. He owns a pool supply store up in Findlay and more people 'round here have been getting pools. There aren't many people who know how to take care of one in the area and he's getting too old to make house calls anymore, he's only a couple years older than me but he's not nearly as spry, so he's always looking for younger guys to train and recommend to all the people that come in wanting someone to take care of their pools." Foster wanders over to his small kitchen as he's talking and squints at the contents on his refrigerator. As he comes back over holding a card out to Puck he offers, "Here, if you're looking for work, a job that teaches a skill is always more valuable- learned that one a long time ago. So, if you need it, call him and just tell him I recommended you, he'll set you up, no problem."

"Cool, thanks," Puck says gratefully, though honestly the idea of taking care of people's pools sounds horrible. He'd have to be around them during the summer and not get to swim in them? What kind of crap job is that?

It turns out that Foster has some kind of tiny, old tractor looking thing that he hitches some completely busted cart to so they don't have to carry everything all the way back. As they're riding back, Foster tells Puck how he used to let his kids pile in the cart thing they're towing with the stuff in it with their friends and he'd drive them around the field. Puck asks if that's how it broke (because it does indeed look broken), but Foster says no, it's always been like that, including when he let the kids in it. He tells him that it was one of the many stupid things he did thinking it'd just be fun, trying to have a good time, and that Addie nearly left him over. Luckily, Addie always forgave him for his idiocy eventually.

(As cool as that seems, that someone would be that forgiving, Puck thought it'd be a lot easier if someone like Foster, who sounded like he was too immature for a family, didn't have one.)

Foster continues telling some pretty awesome sounding stories from his life. He was kind of a rebel and honestly, Puck thinks that if they were around the same age Foster would totally be a good hang. Unfortunately, Foster abruptly changes the topic of conversation while Puck is on the roof of all places. Puck had been under the impression that he'd be needed to hold the ladder or something while Foster fixed the sign, but Foster said he's way too old to be climbing up there now and told Puck to climb on up, he'd tell him what to do once he's there. And it's probably good that he's learning how to fix a sign, after all, Foster did claim learning trades was valuable, but being on the roof and messing with electricity and tools was possibly one of the worst moments Foster could have said what he did. Foster stated (he honestly didn't think he needed to ask at this point), "So you've got the hots for Quinn."

"Huh?" Puck asks after nearly losing his balance and falling backwards off the roof. He holds on to the sign to stable himself and hopes that when Foster replies he says something other than what he thinks he heard the old man say.

"Well that's what we used to call it. What do you say now? You're into her?" Foster asks.

Puck fails to form coherent thoughts, caught too off guard, but the wires in his hand remind him of what he was doing and he tries to focus all of his concentration on the task at hand. He's unable to focus enough to drown Foster out as he continues talking though.

"I get it," Foster begins, "Quinn's a great girl, very pretty. In my opinion not as pretty as Addie still is, but I'm biased. But she's caring and nice and smart too- she's a whole package type of girl, the kind that don't come around often."

If he's not going to throw himself off this roof on purpose, Puck needs this conversation to end, now. He finds his voice (more tight than he's okay with) and informs, "She's into my best friend actually and he likes her too. Pretty sure they'll be dating soon."

Foster scoffs and replies, "_Dating_. Dating doesn't mean anything. And even if it did, if they're not dating yet then she's still fair game."

"He's my best friend," Puck repeats, less for the sake of Foster and more because what Foster had said made thoughts cross swiftly in his mind that didn't belong there and he needed to hear the words again as a reminder.

Foster nods, despite the fact that Puck's back is to him on the roof and he can't see it. "It's a tough place to be," Foster agrees, but adds, "But there are things that are worth risking all the trouble they could cause. The real question is, what's worth the trouble? Or who?"

Puck isn't sure if Foster's still there or if he's left, but he's grateful that he can't tell because the fact that he can't is entirely due to Foster not talking anymore. He finishes the sign (he thinks) and turns around to find Foster still standing there and when he tells Foster that he's done Foster turns it on to test it out and it turns out he did indeed fix it (he thinks it may be the first thing besides his car that he's ever fixed).

They head inside and Foster thanks him for his pretty quick and impressive work with the sign with a soda. Since he has a bit of time before needing to get Kelyn yet, Puck ends up helping Foster make sure everything in the bar is clean--- booths, tables, chairs, every imaginable surface. Thankfully, as they're both cleaning, Foster doesn't mention Quinn or the conversation he started outside again, he doesn't even allude to it. Puck hopes that it never comes up again.

When the time to leave starts approaching he considers what to do. He could leave, as he's supposed to, and probably see Quinn there tomorrow because he did promise guitar lessons. He could also go to the kitchen and let her know he's leaving. He can't think of any reason why the latter is necessary. He doesn't owe her (well he does, but that's what the guitar lessons are for), he's not polite (unless his mom is watching), he doesn't care (he does), and he doesn't want to see her again before he leaves (he needs to).

With only a minute more until he needs to be out the door and in his truck headed in the direction of Kelyn's friend's house, he tosses the rag he had been using to clean stuff off down on the bar unnecessarily forcefully and walks determinedly to the kitchen door. He comes to a stop right out side it, pauses and thinks about what he's doing, what it could be perceived to mean. But he knows what it means (what he wants to think it means, which is nothing) and so he takes a breath and opens the door, steps in to find himself stopped again because she's standing there at some table/work station in the middle of the small room slicing tomatoes and laughing whole-heartedly with Addie.

He has no idea what they're laughing about, but the fact that she is, is enough to bring a smile to his face. He doesn't notice that it's there until Quinn calms down and asks him, "What?"

He realizes the strange expression that must have prompted the question and he asks, "Nothing. Just wondering what's going on in here?"

"Addie is trying to make me eat lots of very fatty food," Quinn simultaneously accuses of Addie (the woman had been trying to force her to taste everything she made- all of which so far had very high calorie counts) and informs Puck in a "save me" tone.

"You're skin and bones," Addie retorts playfully. She had been going through this bantering routine with Quinn ever since she started eating there.

Puck starts laughing at a thought the whole thing inspires, one he's prompted to voice when both pairs of eyes in the room turn to him, eyebrow's raised. He answers their unasked question of what he's thinking, "I just got a mental picture of that- you know, you fat and the other cheerleaders trying to hoist you to the top of the pyramid. That'd be hilarious."

As Quinn glares at Puck because that idea certainly is not funny, she finds a bad spot on the tomato she's cutting, slices it out, and intends to toss it in the garbage.

Puck hadn't noticed that he'd been standing next to a large open garbage can until the tomato Quinn threw in it's direction missed and hit his pant leg, leaving a very noticeable spot before tumbling to the ground. Now, it was his turn to glare at her.

"I missed," she states, lacking an apologetic tone in her voice.

"Yeah," Puck agrees, "What happened to all that coordination and aim you were bragging about yesterday? A little too much to the left today."

"A little too south actually," Quinn corrects with a smirk, "I was aiming for your face." She wasn't, but after his fat quip she realizes she probably should have.

Addie catches Puck glancing at the garbage and has a feeling things are about to turn messy, in more ways that one. She hopes to interrupt any ideas he's getting when she asks, "Did Fos send you back to help me now? He all done with you?"s

"Nope," Puck responds, just now remembering what he was doing in there in the first place, "I'm leaving actually, need to go pick up Kelyn. He may have been joking, but he did say that he'd give me five bucks if I came in here and told you that he brought wine for tonight."

"He what?" Addie says sharply. "He brought wine? Is he really that stupid? He got our liquor license taken away he can't serve wine. What is he thinking?"

Neither teen has any answers for her, obviously, so Addie quickly heads past Puck and out of the kitchen to berate her husband who was obviously not thinking at all anymore.

Quinn has continued her task throughout Puck's presence (it's a good distraction) and he's noticed the way she's just kept working.

"I'm going to get you back for the tomato," he promises because they can't just stand there in silence (not talking has led to….he's not sure, it's not a familiar situation for him).

"Sure you will," Quinn says sarcastically. Not that she really doubts he's the type of person to get revenge, it's just fun to antagonize him like that.

He means to say something back, something mean or offensive as per his usual demeanor. But she's standing there with the light coming in from a window across the room, making her glow as she just slices tomatoes in her hand-me-down apron and light blue dress and he loses his ability to think of anything besides going over to the space where she is and kissing her. And if he's being honest (which he's not) he's been fighting that exact thought since he stepped in the room.

(If he's being honest, which he's still not, he's been unsuccessfully fighting thoughts exactly like that one since she spent the night on his couch, since she volunteered to watch his sister, hell, since he passed her in the main hallway on the first day of freshmen year and couldn't remember what class he was supposed to be heading to.)

"I should go," he announces and he doesn't really mean to say it out loud, but he needs the extra push to leave right now.

"Tell Kelyn hi for me," Quinn says with a smile and glance to him, because she already misses her a bit. (And she can't really help the smiling, she's glad he came to see her before he left even if he did have a legitimate reason for coming in and it didn't have anything to do with her, she's still glad there was this moment of closure, she thinks it will help her from thinking of him any more today- she's wrong.)

"Yeah," he says and the weirdness of his tone makes her look up again. It's like he's not quite present for the present and she wonders what he's thinking of because he's looking at her and it's not in some expected way like he looks at other girls.

Despite saying he should leave and silence not settling between them right after, he still somehow got drawn back to that place in his mind where he's not standing six feet from her, but he's standing right where she is and he's kissing her. He more than kind of wishes that what he couldn't stop imagining in his head was happening in reality.

The idea of it becoming real, the fact that he has very little stopping him and there's nothing here now that should be motivating him brings him back to the fact that the fantasy in his head can't happen (and he's really hoping that the forbidden aspect is why he keeps wanting it so much). He clears his throat, tears his eyes off her and onto the floor, and says quickly, "See ya." He makes it out the door before he can hear if she has any kind of response and he rushes out of the bar so quick he doesn't notice Addie and Foster on the other side of the bar pause in their fight to thank him for his help.

His rushed exit was weird, but she tries not to wonder what it could possibly have to do with her. He was Puck, who hit on and used every girl he could, and it didn't matter if she knew him to be a few other things beside that, it was enough to mean that they wouldn't and couldn't be anything more than they were now- two people who had an arrangement to help each other. She tires to distract herself by helping Addie and Foster the rest of the night, not leaving until all of their many guests do. She cooks and serves food and she chit-chats with the caravanning customers. And as far as she is concerned, she doesn't think about Puck because they're not anything and there's never been any sort of moment between them, not even tiny ones.

(In moments in between all of her usual pretending- which she does not to alter her personality tonight, but to convince herself of her own thoughts- she finds moments where she's frozen. She'd be talking to a table of people and zone out, she'd be frying up a batch of onion rings and her mind would drift off to some far away place. Only it wasn't really a far away place, but to moments that did happen and that weren't insignificant, and were with Puck- despite how much she doesn't think they should be.)

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**A/N: To be continued… (soon). **

**I hope you enjoyed reading this first part. Remember, writers love feedback!**


	5. Chapter 3, Part 2

**A/N: Thank you to the wonderful people who reviewed!** I hope everyone got a chance to read the first part of this chapter.

First, I'd like to address something CAS mentioned in her (or his) review about Addie's tale of her miscarriage being foreshadowing. A lot of you may be suspecting that, but that's not the purpose of the story. What is the purpose? That will become clear in time, but I just wanted to assure everyone that even if it becomes canon, Quinn's not losing the baby in this story.

Second, just a reminder of where we're at time wise, it's about the last week of April, first week of May-ish. By the estimated due date the show is providing (and if their Easter occurred the same as ours in 2010 would) then Quinn actually would have gotten pregnant at the beginning of July. However, for the purposes of this story, I don't like that idea so I'm going to pretend that's not true and she'll get pregnant around late September.

Finally, just a warning, I started new Masters classes a few days ago and I'm taking a few extra courses this term and I'll probably be pretty busy. I am still hoping to get the next chapter (which should answer a lot of the baby-making-situation questions) out before the show comes back, and I have gotten about a third of the way through writing it so far, but, again, it may not happen any time too soon.

I'll shut up now and let you get on with reading. Sorry for the rambling.

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**Cheated Hearts

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**

_III. This is not what I'm like, this is not what I do; This is not what I'm like, I think I'm falling for you (part 2)_

Wednesday should be weird for them. At school in the hallway, Finn had been walking and obviously having a conversation with Puck, but he ditches his best friend when he sees Quinn and walks her to class instead. And they both know that Finn left Puck for Quinn (they both know where this is headed too). They're good at lying though, to themselves and others. Pretending isn't even second nature, it's first, and the lack of effort it requires to function like the whole thing didn't happen, isn't happening, is almost disturbing.

When Puck gets to Foster's though, he starts to wonder if they were closer to the big change than he thought. Quinn's car isn't there and the first place his mind goes is that Finn must have asked her to hang out. And he can't really blame her for not letting him know that she wasn't showing up (getting mad about it would let it mean too much) because this was the way things were supposed to be anyway. She was a relationship girl and Finn was a relationship guy, a really good one too (and he didn't qualify as either of those things, didn't usually want to be either).

He stays in his truck in the parking lot for a few minutes though because he doesn't know where to go. He had a lot of time to kill before needing to pick up Kelyn and it had been more than a month since he had completely free time to himself like this and if feels weird (mostly because he'd spent nearly all of his other free time in some way with Quinn).

As he's considering that he should head in and say hi to Foster anyway, see how their big thing went the previous night, a cab pulls up behind his truck. Quinn gets out in a rush and practically bolts past his door and into the bar. He has to spring out of his truck just to catch her. "Hey," he calls.

She comes to an abrupt halt. She's late and she hates being late and she had been rushing. "Good, you're just getting here," she says relieved.

"Yeah," he says, writing it off and not telling her that that wasn't exactly true. Getting back to what was important in this situation though, he questions, "What's with the cab though? Where's your car?"

"My mom has it. She had to take hers in, something's wrong, I don't know I wasn't really listening. She told me about two minutes before I was going to head to cheer practice this morning and both her and my dad said they couldn't give me a ride so I had to hurry and find one. Then my cab to get here was late showing up and the guy drove slow," she explains, rambling slightly and knowing she's getting an edge to her voice about her parents, which she really doesn't feel like getting into right now. She changes the subject, "Did you remember your guitar today?"

"Yeah," he answers again and he pulls it out of the bed of his truck. He intends to once again get back to the more important matter in this situation, but when he turns back around she's already heading into Foster's.

There's small talk for a few minutes with Foster as they're heading in as he tells them some of the things that happened the previous night with all of their customers, some of which Quinn even missed since she was in the kitchen for at least half the night. Luckily Foster gets a phone call and they get to head to their usual booth and Puck gets to get back to the conversation they were in the middle of that she dropped outside. He states, hopefully casually because he means it to not mean anything, "You could have called me for a ride. We were both coming to the same place."

"Thank you," she says politely and she tries to maintain like she's not reading anything into it because she knows she shouldn't be, "But I know you have to get Kelyn after school and that you probably had something to do with her whether you were bringing her here or taking her somewhere else. It's fine. The only problem with the cab is that the ones in our town aren't very timely." She feels like she's rambling again, especially since she's launched into half the rationalizations she fed herself about why she couldn't call him for a ride.

"Well I'm giving you a ride home," he declares and he's surprised by the words that just left his mouth. He hadn't thought about offering that, at least that he was aware of, but there it was and he couldn't really take it back. Could he? Nah, he'll have to stick with this. He elaborates, thinking quickly, "You can't take a cab at night alone. I've taken some cabs and met some of the drivers for the few in our town, if they get an underage girl in their back seat who's parents clearly don't know where she is, I don't think you'll be making it home. And Kelyn would be pissed at me if she knew I let something happen to you."

"So you being nice and offering a ride is actually just about saving your own ass?" Quinn questions, hoping he'll say yes because this is a more appropriate situation for them to be in with each other.

"Of course," he confirms, trying to act as if that could be his only possible motivation because it should be. He adds, "Plus, if you can wait to need a ride home until I have to get Kelyn then she could see you and I could be the awesome big brother that made sure she got to see her new favorite babysitter again."

So really, if she accepts this she'd be doing him a favor. That's all the convincing Quinn needs before she agrees, "Fine. I suppose I do need a ride. And since my house is out of your way the least I could do to pay you back is leave whenever you need to so you can do something nice for your sister."

"Awesome," Puck responds because him opening his mouth without thinking had worked out pretty well. He was going to drive Quinn home so he didn't have to worry about how she'd get there (which, let's face it, he was going to do) and he was going to become a better big brother in Kelyn's eyes for letting her see Quinn (which he kind of needed at the moment because he had been bugging her quite a bit about all the time she was spending with this Jamie kid).

"What time do you need to pick Kelyn up?" Quinn asks so she can start thinking of what she's going to tell her parents when she gets home at whatever time.

"Eight," Puck answers, the same edgy tone to his voice that had been there all week when thinking about where Kelyn was.

"Eight?" Quinn questions. Not that she minded spending that much time away from home, but it seemed like a long time to let Kelyn have a play date. She realizes that she's not positive of where Kelyn is and checks, "Is she at that boy's house again?"

"Yeah," Puck says with a sigh, trying to let it go. He rationalizes, "His mom said that she started this book club for her son and some of his friends so every Wednesday they all come over, she makes sure they do their homework, she reads to them for a while, they eat, she reads more or has them read, and if there's time left over she puts in a video. Apparently this lady used to be a teacher and Kelyn heard from one of the other kids in it that she does voices and puts on costumes when she reads to them or has them read, so I guess that's good. I don't like her spending a third day in a row over there or being over for so long, but there are other kids there and she's learning from a professional so…"

"Yeah, it sounds good," Quinn agrees because she can see he's in a tough place.

"But I have to find something else for her to do. If I'm going to let her go over there for most of the afternoon and night once a week, then I don't want her over there every other day," Puck says, not really meaning to tell her his problems but it had been weighing on his mind all week that if he just had other things for her to do she wouldn't be spending every day at this boy's house.

"First, he's a friend and you have nothing to worry about. She's only nine," Quinn reminds because she feels like it needs to be said. Addressing what he said though, she adds, "Though in the long run extra curricular activities are more valuable. Popularity can be a skill for a college application, but she's only hanging out with one boy and that doesn't count as popularity. Having interests and hobbies looks good though so you really should find something she can do. When I mentioned having taken dance lessons she seemed interested. I know there's some free ones through Parks and Rec. You should look into it for her."

"Dance, huh?" Puck didn't really like the idea of dance, mainly because he wasn't sure he could actually lie well enough to ever tell her that he doesn't think she looks ridiculous. But Quinn was one of those people definitely headed for college so she probably knew what she was talking about and he wanted his sister to go to college (even if he thought school was stupid, he wanted her to have it). He decides he'll look into it, see if there's actually a free class before he proposes the idea to Kelyn, but there's something more interesting to think about right now. "What kind of dance did you take?" Puck asks, hoping that the answer is something he can tease her about or at least get a good laugh out of.

"Ballet," she answers, "I…" she hesitates. Now that she's talking about it, about herself, it feels like one of those personal conversations they really shouldn't be having. She figures, if she rushes and doesn't act like it's important, then maybe it doesn't have to be. She continues, "My mom signed me up when I was little. Little girls are supposed to be ballerinas in all. But then she realized that dance recitals don't get written about in the local paper like sports do and all the other mothers were putting their daughters in gymnastics or cheer so she put me in both and she yanked me out of ballet, said there wasn't time for it anymore."

"You liked it though?" he questions. He's not sure how he read that about her, but something just screamed at him in his head that he was right.

"Yeah," she says casually, trying again to make this meaningless, "I liked them all. I was good at all of them. What's not to like?" It was a lie and she felt like it wasn't her best one, like he could see through it. She did like ballet more. But she was eight and what did she really know? She probably would have gotten tired of it in another year. She changes the topic so she doesn't think about it anymore, "So, what about those guitar lessons?"

He's pretty sure she was lying and he wonders when he learned how to tell that about her. He thought she was just as good as him at it and maybe she was, just not to him. He doesn't want to think about that though, because thinking about it makes him wonder what it means. When she tries to change the topic, he goes along with it.

He tells her that she has to learn the chords first (after it's established she can read music- which he mocks her for when she says it was thanks to her church choir). As he's sketching out a guitar and writing down chords on it for her on a piece of paper, she questions, "I thought you'd just teach me a song? This seems a little formal."

"It's the way I learned how to play," he answers distractedly, concentrating on his drawing.

"You sat through lessons? I thought you'd be a learn-by-ear type," she says and she doesn't mean it to mean anything bad. She imagines learning by ear would be difficult, but she just couldn't picture him having the patience or disposition to actually listen to someone else and let them teach him.

"Yeah, I didn't really want them, but my mom got them for me and I couldn't turn them down," he answers just as engrossed in his task as he was during his previous answer. An explanation gets away from him before he realizes it as he continues his drawing, "A couple years ago I had been telling my mom I wanted to use some money I saved to buy a used guitar, but then she surprised me for my birthday and gave me a new one. She gave it to me on the condition that she didn't want to listen to crap so she had saved up a little extra and hired someone to teach me to play. She only let the guy teach me how to play music by Jewish artists though. Luckily he taught me how to play before he taught me how to play songs, so it was pretty easy to learn other stuff on my own. Which is why I'm teaching you how to play, rather than just teaching you a song. It's better." With that he's done with his quick drawing and he slides it over to her and tells her to memorize it.

Quinn quickly memorizes what she believes he's written down, but what happens from there sets the tone for the rest of their lesson.

When she fails to correctly identify chords on his guitar when he's testing her knowledge after she claims to have memorized his sketch, he blames it on a lack of intelligence on her part ("A three-year old on Youtube can memorize guitar chords and you claim to be all smart and you can't?"). She blames the fact that his sketch was just that, a sketch, and therefore too rough and completely _mis_-informative ("Well maybe if you had the basic skill of being able to write properly your letters wouldn't all look so much alike they're indistinguishable.").

Eventually she manages to identify the right chords in his little test and they move past it. Until they get to the next task of him having her play a couple of chords. It starts with, "You're not pressing hard enough. You can lift other girls over your head, cheerleader, but you can't press a chord? What are you, challenged?" from him. And is retorted with, "Well God knows what I could catch from touching something of yours."

They spend two whole hours like this. He says something insulting. She says something insulting. She doesn't like listening to his directions. He prefers giving her orders rather than teaching her. It's a bad combination.

Finally, Puck gets fed up and orders, "Okay, stand up."

Quinn does so with a role of her eyes because this ordering her around is getting old. She's surprised when he gets up too. And she's even more surprised when she gets nervous when he quickly walks around her and ends up behind her. Suddenly, he's completely invading her space (and she doesn't really mind, which isn't as surprising as she'd like it to be).

"Here," he says as he wraps his arms around her and covers her hands with his, forcing her to play a chord right finally. It isn't until he's demonstrated it right and his frustration is eased that he realizes what he's done, what situation he's put himself in. He takes in a soft, shaky breath and just stays there for a second- letting himself be this close to her and almost hold her for just a second because he knows it's not supposed to happen and it can't happen again.

He forces himself to make it end though. He questions, "You think you got it now?"

"Yeah," she breathes and he tries not to notice the way her voice sounds because he knows it's probably all in his head.

She notices that he still doesn't step away for a beat, doesn't let go, but she tries to convince herself that it's just because she's a girl and he's a hormonal teenage guy, and it's as simple as that.

He sits back down to distance himself from the moment that just took place and tells her to play the chords they had been working on her doing forever now to distract them both. She plays them successfully now and despite the accomplishment she's not inspired to smile- the feel of him around her, touching her, still too distracting to think about the present.

She sits back down after that, not knowing what he wants her to try and do next.

It takes a lot of effort, but he manages to think clearly and mentions, "Since you know the chords and basically how to play them, the next step would be giving you a song to try and play, something to practice with, only I didn't bring any sheet music."

Hoping that he was implying that he'd have to remember to bring some next time, hoping there'd be a next time, she warns, "Well when you bring some don't make it any song with anything obscene in it."

"Yeah, I'll make sure to do that," he returns sarcastically. He's the one giving the lessons and as far as he's concerned that means the music is totally up to him and he's not going to listen to any girly crap just because she'd probably like it.

Her eyes narrow at him as she realizes, "You know, I've never seen you play anything? I have no proof that you even know how to play."

"I just taught you how to," he points out.

"You could have been teaching me wrong for all I know," she counters.

He nearly growls in frustration. This back and forth between them was weirdly fun most of the time, but he was getting pretty tired of it today. Though that may have in part been due to the fact that today he couldn't seem to force his mind away from thinking of all the better uses for her mouth. "Fine," he relents tightly. He grabs his guitar back from her and he has to get situated on towards the end of the booth because that's the only way he can play. He thinks for a second, deciding what he's going to play, and settles "Don't Fear the Reaper."

He plays the first five seconds before he's interrupted by Quinn announcing, "I have no idea what that song is."

"Blue Oyster Cult, 'Don't Fear the Reaper.' You couldn't have never heard that before, it's like, a hugely famous song," he says disbelievingly because seriously, who wouldn't recognize the opening chords to that song?

She simply shrugs in response. Honestly, it did sound very vaguely familiar, like she may have heard it in a television show or movie for a few seconds a long time ago, but it wasn't a song she knew. She knew he probably wasn't making all this up and that it probably wasn't necessary of her to put him through this, but really, she just wanted to see him play as much as possible.

This time, he does let out a small growl of frustration. He tries to think of something else to play and figures that everyone has to have heard tons of Bob Dylan songs or at least covers of them so he starts playing "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

She honestly doesn't recognize this new song he's playing either. Again, it does sound just a tiny bit familiar, but if her life depended on it, she couldn't name the song or artist. She lets him get about twenty seconds into it though, thinking she'll figure it out and because it does sound good, and then she planned on letting him know that this one wasn't one she knew either. Quinn's plan gets interrupted though when they hear Foster call, "Are you playing Dylan?"

Puck stops and answers, "Yeah."

As Foster makes his way over he tells them, "Oh, I'm a big Dylan fan. Addie too. Among many other people of course, but Dylan's pretty special to me. 'Make You Feel My Love' is one of mine and Addie's songs. Do you know it?"

Instead of answering verbally, Puck plays a few seconds of it, making Foster smile. "Would you mind playing it for us?" Foster asks.

"Sure," Puck agrees because Foster knows he can play it so it's not like he can say no, he walked right into that one. Not that he'd say no though. Normally he did enjoy being defiant, but even after helping them out yesterday he felt like he still owed Foster and Addie after everything they'd done for him and Kelyn.

"Aw, thank you! I'll just get Addie, hold on one second," Foster says and heads for the kitchen quickly. Both teens are left wondering when exactly Addie got there and crossed the very room they've been sitting in for hours to get to the kitchen.

Twenty seconds that were spent in silence between Quinn and Puck later, Foster comes back through the kitchen door dragging Addie behind him who's questioning, "What? What was so important that I had to come out here right this second?"

Rather than answering her Foster simply says, "Okay, go ahead now Puck."

Puck goes to start the song, but stops and reaches into his pocket, pulls out what looks a whole lot like a clothes pin to Quinn, and puts it on the neck of his guitar before quickly starting to play.

After the first few notes of the song Addie recognizes it and smiles at her husband. He opens his arms to her and she gladly accepts the dance. When they get to the first line of "To make you feel my love," he sings softly along with it.

Quinn's nearly positive that she's never heard this song and actually she probably never heard the last one he played either because she's not familiar with any Bob Dylan. But, it is nice. It's soft and it sounds sweet somehow and it's doesn't have the type of sound to a song she'd expect him to know. Even better, about half way through, she can hear him humming along as he plays the song for Addie and Foster. She could laugh at him, make fun of him, but instead she says nothing at all and she knows it's because she'd rather just listen.

When the song ends Addie and Foster make their way back to the table and thank Puck for playing one of their songs. Addie tries to lean in for a hug, but Puck uses his guitar to block her. "Fine," she gives up, "I won't hug you…right now. I'll get you later."

"I don't do hugs," Puck warns.

"I already got you once," Addie reminds.

"You snuck up on me from behind," Puck exclaims, it had scared the hell out of him at the time. He thought she had gone back inside, she had already said goodnight, and then there were arms around him. She's lucky he realized who she was before he decked her.

Playing innocent, Addie changed the subject, "So what other songs do you know?"

Quinn interjects before he can give them some brush-off answer, "He knows a lot of stuff by Jewish artists."

"You must know Neil Diamond!" Addie says hopefully.

"Not really," Puck lies at the same time Foster says, "Not Neil."

Addie catches what they both said, but argues with her husband, "Neil Diamond is my _favorite_."

"Oh, I know," Foster mutters.

"Have you ever seen him?" she questions the teens during her husband's mumble, thus not hearing it.

"No," Quinn answers politely while Puck answers with a ruder, "Not even if you paid me."

Addie chooses to ignore the response that exemplified her husband's feelings toward her favorite musical artists and responded to Quinn, "Oh I never understood why girls would throw their undergarments at a rock star, but then I got to see Neil live in concert early in his career. That man was, is, ….magical."

"Psh," Foster lets slip sarcastically.

"He was too," Addie retorts.

"No, Dylan was amazing. Diamond was…unimpressive," Foster argues.

They banter back and forth arguing for their artist-of-choice by naming song titles until seven songs in Addie names, "Neil did 'Solitary Man.'"

"He covered it. It's originally Dylan's," Foster counters.

Addie opens her mouth, ready to tell her husband that he's wrong, but she shuts it and reconsiders. "Come on," she says eventually.

"What?" Foster asks completely confused.

"We're going home to settle this because I'm not getting into another "you're wrong-I'm right" fight with you," Addie declares. As an aside to the teenagers she asks, "You guys will be okay here for a few minutes, right? If you need us the house is speed dial one on the phone at the bar." As they made their way out, Puck and Quinn could hear Addie explaining to her husband that they'd use their record collections to settle this and if it didn't, they'd use Wikipedia like their kids were always talking about.

"Did you know the song they were talking about?" Quinn asks to break the awkward silence that was settling over them and in hopes that he had an idea of what was going on because all she had gotten from their conversation was a bunch of song titles she didn't recognize.

"Yep," Puck answers honestly.

"Do you know which one of them is right?" Quinn asks since he didn't volunteer anything beyond a syllable.

"Yep," Puck answers honestly again. He watches her face contort into a glare that just screams "how could you…" and he decides to say a little more before she can get pissed at him, "Addie is right. Foster is confused, Dylan never covered Solitary Man- not officially at least. But if Addie won with me still sitting here with my guitar she may try to get me to play Neil Diamond so let them duke it out on their own."

"So you made their fight about you?" Quinn checks, not that such behavior from him surprises her exactly but it still feels a little out of place somehow.

He simply shrugs in response. He wasn't going to explain it to her, but he was actually thinking bro's before ho's (it was a concept that had been stuck at the forefront of his mind lately given his current…situation). If he confirmed that Foster was wrong and Addie was right that wouldn't be very bro-ish of him. If he let the fight continue, maybe Foster would find a way to win somehow, but being the one to make him lose, that just wasn't a person he wanted to be.

Quinn almost berates him for his selfishness, but she knows she plays the same role pretty frequently and she doesn't need her hypocrisy pointed out to her. Instead, she returns to her pre-Addie-and-Foster-fight task- getting him to play her songs. She says with mischief clear in her tone, "You know, I still didn't recognize any song you've played."

"Why do you need to recognize it?" he questions tiredly. He gets that she's finding this situation enjoyable somehow, even though he doesn't see how, and he honestly doesn't care about fighting it anymore, he'd just rather let her get whatever kicks she's trying for over with.

"So I can know when or if you mess up. You could have messed up the song you played for Addie and Foster tons and I wouldn't have known because I didn't know the song. And if you did mess it up are you really the person I should be learning how to play from? If I'm going to trust that you're teaching me well and teaching me right, then I need proof that you're as good as you say," Quinn points out actual rational for her actions despite the fact that she was really just picking up on an opportunity to mess with him (it was a safer activity than talking to him).

"What about the fact that Addie and Foster didn't say anything about me messing up their song?" Puck challenges, not able to resist fighting her just a little even if he doesn't really want to.

"They're far too nice to say anything even if you messed up their song enough for it not to be recognizable," Quinn retorts.

"I played their song perfectly," Puck defends.

"Prove it," Quinn challenges, "play something else. Something I know."

Puck sighs. He'd been going with the old stuff because that was what he learned with, had been playing the longest, and actually had sheet music for. It had been a while since he had the time to play much and it had been even longer since he had tabs for the song he'd been playing. He didn't know any "girl" music so he supposed he'd have to go with one of the most recent songs he learned which happened to be pretty popular. This time he checks before he starts playing, "You've heard Ne-Yo's 'Mad' right? It's been all over the radio."

"Yeah. They played it at least a dozen times at the winter formal too," Quinn answers honestly, a little sad that they won't get to drag out him playing for her anymore because he found a song she knows.

He rolls his eyes a little, head bowed, because of course this is one she knows. With hearing the song all over the place he'd gotten it stuck in his head. It didn't really have a subject matter he'd normally like to listen to, but when he'd picked up his guitar one day, with the song still hanging in his head, he found himself trying to compose it by ear. He thought he'd been successful, but he'd also never played it for anyone. He wasn't crazy about the idea that she was going to hear something that he had no idea whether it sounded as close to the original as he thought, but he's done a lot of other stuff with her he never thought he would so this shouldn't really surprise him. He sighs, gives into the fact that he's not getting out of this moment, decides he believes that he kicks ass enough to have the song right, and begins playing.

Quinn smiles immediately (and almost wishes he'd look up from his guitar and catch her), but comes to her senses and reigns it in, leaving just the corners of her mouth lifted (they wouldn't go down). He's good, better than just good actually. She can hear the words of the song she does know in his playing because it's that good. She's even more impressed that he's somehow managed to put some of the drumbeat into it through the way he's playing, which she has no idea how he did.

(Later, when she's home, she'll download "Mad" and listen to it all the time, thinking it didn't seem as good. She'll buy the Dylan songs too and listen to "Make You Feel My Love" enough in the coming months that her parents will actually catch on to thinking that they often hear it coming out of her room. She'll take measures to make sure she only listens when they're too inebriated to notice or through headphones from then on. But she doesn't stop listening, liking the things they remind her of too much to give them up.)

He'd by lying if he was to say he wasn't holding his breath and awaiting a reaction from her when he was done playing the song. But lying is totally alright by him so he isn't doing anything at all when the song ends and he certainly doesn't care what she thinks.

"Fine, you're good," Quinn admits, still managing to restrain her smile by looking down at the table instead of at him. And she knows she shouldn't, but she looks up and she has to struggle even harder against smiling. When she sees a smirk forming across his face she can't resist anymore, can't pretend. She smiles wide and compliments, "It was…very impressive actually."

"I know," he says leaning back causally, acting typically cockily and more thrilled than he expected to be about the fact that she thought he was good.

She kicks his leg under the table and while he screams "Ow" and scowls at her for a second, she doesn't pull her leg back as far away from his as it used to be, instead leaving it there near his, inches apart. Trying not to think of what she's deliberately done, Quinn also knows they need to avoid silence so she questions, "So is this what you're going to do? Get out of Lima by being a musician or something?"

"Who says I'm getting out of Lima?" he questions in return because he knows he never told her anything like that, it wasn't entirely accurate.

"Is there anyone in this town who doesn't want to get out of Lima?" she poses, rationalizing her assumption.

He nods in agreement, "True." He strums at his guitar lightly, distractedly as he gets back to her original question, "No real plans to be a musician or anything though. Not that I wouldn't make a kick ass rock star, but I probably wouldn't end up doing anything like that. If I left, I'd just leave. I don't need a goal bigger than this town to do it. I don't really care, I'd be a janitor somewhere else, as long as I'm not here."

She caught the "if" and they hypothetical subtext of his words so she questions using his own words, "If you left? You're not planning on it?"

He shrugs as if this isn't really as serious as it is. The future isn't really one of his favorite topics because he knows his doesn't have the same freedoms as everyone else's and if he got what he really wanted, he'd still be losing in some ways. He tries to explain it like he doesn't care (it doesn't work), like he's just stating facts that he's accepted and isn't a little jaded about, "I can't exactly pick up and go after graduation, can I? Kel will only be ten. And yeah my mom's supposed to be getting better and maybe she won't ever have one of her annual benders again, but I can't leave a ten year old to deal with it if she did."

"How old were you when you had to deal with it?" she asks, even though it feels too personal. She knows this isn't her place, and maybe based on the personality he has at school and most of society he's not destined to end up anything more than a convict, but doesn't everyone to have the hope of getting out of this town? It's all that keeps her going sometimes, she doesn't know what she'd do if she lost it.

He figures that she could probably do the math so he doesn't bother confirming that she's right, he did have to start dealing with stuff like that (with that) pretty young, but he doesn't want his sister to be him. What his life has been, what it could be, is fine for him, but it's not okay for his sister, far from it. He answers simply repeating, "I can't leave her here. I can't do that to her. Can't let her know what it's like to have another person leave her."

"It's not the same. You wouldn't be leaving her, just leaving town," she argues because it doesn't sound like he made the distinction between him leaving to have a future and how his dad walked out on them.

Her point makes sense in his head, but he knows from long hours spent thinking about the future that it doesn't feel like that. If he left on a college scholarship even (which sounds like a bleak future to him) he knows it'd still feel like he was ditching them- and all the phone calls, emails, and trips home wouldn't change that. He shrugs as if he doesn't really care (a mask that's failing in this moment) and responds, "It's close enough. Besides, just because I'm staying for a while for her, to make sure she gets out of this town, doesn't mean I ain't leaving. Just have to be a temporary Lima loser, staying here like I'm staying put. I'm not letting myself get stuck here forever, just for a while."

She doesn't know what to say to that. It makes her feel sad and she's not quite sure why. Maybe it's just the thought of having to stay in this suffocating town more than two more years. (Maybe it's that that means there's zero chance of him leaving with her.)

He doesn't want to be the topic anymore, didn't want to be in the first place. And he's tired of thinking of the things he won't have, seems to be all he's been doing lately. "Where're you headed after graduation?" he asks not only because of her earlier mention of how no one wants to stay in Lima, but also because she was one of those rare girls who everyone knew was destined to get out of here, to some better-than-a-dream life.

She's glad for the distraction of her increasingly troubling thoughts and shrugs with a small smile, "Don't know. I'm going to apply to tons of colleges all over the country and go to the best one I get into. I'm hoping for one on either coast, near a beach."

Her on a beach, that's an idea he could get behind, and one he'd normally twist and make a dirty comment about, but that wasn't the type of thing he should be doing with a girl who was probably going to be Finn's girlfriend soon. Instead, he asks teasingly, "And you're going to cheer for your college near the beach too?"

"No," she answers.

"No?" he questions confused. He was expecting a yes and had an insult prepared for it.

"No," she repeats, "It seems a bit like a waste since I'm good at it, and it's not that I don't enjoy it, but I can't spend four years as a cheerleader here and another four. I can't have my life be about cheer anymore, not after high school. That's why I'm an honor student, so my only way into college isn't for cheer."

"Oh," he says, not knowing what to say. She keeps not being the person he expects her to be (and it bothers him that he thinks he'd be okay with her either way, he'd want her either way).

They got into personal things again Quinn realizes and they shouldn't have. She doesn't remember how they got here, but it was probably her doing, and she needs to fix it. She wracks her brain for something else to say, to change the topic, glancing at her watch she finally comes up with something. "It's nearly seven. Only a little over an hour before you need to get Kelyn."

Puck glances at the clock on the wall behind her and notices that she's right. "Right," he agrees, "It won't take long to get dinner here, right? Should one of us go get them so we could order something? And if so, not it."

"Mature," she comments with roll of her eyes at his childish "not-it" tactic. She answers though, "It doesn't usually take Addie very long to make anything, we don't need to get them." She's surprised by this though. She knew Kelyn was eating at her friend's house, but she didn't know he planned on eating with her. She didn't know he thought she'd be eating before they left and he gave her a ride. It makes sense that they do this, but somehow it doesn't sit well with her. Eating together, though done often between friends and strangers, felt like a date activity, here, with him, and she knows that shouldn't be a situation she's in with him.

Meanwhile, Puck is thinking only of eating. It'd been nearly three hours since he had anything to eat at all and a pack of beef jerky and Flamin' Hot Cheetos doesn't last that long. "Do they actually have menu's in this place? Because I actually have no idea what they serve."

Before Quinn can answer Addie and Foster come through the side door loudly. Addie immediately calls over to them, "Sorry we took so long. We got side tracked." Addie smirks over at her husband as he returns to his usual perch behind the bar and both teenagers have a feeling that they know what "side tracked" meant and they really didn't want to. As if she knew what they had been talking about, Addie questions, "Are you guys ready to order?"

"Puck wants to know what you have to order," Quinn interjects before Puck can speak because she's been coming here a while and she knows Addie has an answer for him.

"Well just about anything you can think of honey," she answers, "we have a bunch of stuff, I can make just about anything, so you just name it." Before he can name anything she adds on, "Whatever you order you have to have some of Quinn's pie though. I'm pretty sure we still have some left. She was back there helping me all night, did everything I needed her to do, and she somehow managed to find the time to take the left over fruit, make pie dough from scratch, and cook our guests some pie that they just raved about."

"It was nothing," Quinn says modestly, which isn't a typical trait for her, not in her usual persona, but it's closer to the real her.

"Yeah, how hard can cooking be?" Puck agrees. He's never gotten modesty, he fully believes in boasting and if someone doesn't, they should suffer the consequences of having their accomplishment torn down- and that's where he came in.

"Can you cook?" Quinn challenges.

He probably should have seen that one coming. He answers honestly, "I microwave."

"What have you been feeding Kelyn when you two haven't been here?" Addie questions concerned.

"Takeout," Puck answers as if it's the obvious answer.

After making some noise that sounded like disappointment/disbelief, Addie questions, "You really don't know how to cook at all? You never help out your mother? She has to do it all on her own?"

"She doesn't cook that much. She usually just makes a bunch of stuff on the weekend and we re-heat throughout the week," Puck says, thinking it was in his defense.

"Well she shouldn't have to do that. You have two perfectly good hands, you should be helping. I taught all my kids how to cook and by the time they were in high school they all made a meal for the family one night a week," Addie recalls. She declares, "And you should be able to help out your mother when she needs it. When she gets back you're going to cook her dinner and I'm going to teach you how to cook right now. Come on, let's go to the kitchen."

"Uh," Puck stalls. Man, he's having an off day or something because he can't think of a single excuse. He can't exactly just run either. How whimpy would that make him look? And he can't look like a wuss; Quinn may not be an option, but she's still a girl and he can't look like he's her same gender in front of her. With Addie staring at him, waiting on him, and he's got no idea in his head to get him out of this, he gives in and stands up.

As Puck's following Addie into the kitchen, Addie calls to Quinn, "We'll surprise you with what's for dinner honey."

-o-o-o-

About forty-five minutes later Quinn's wondering if it's sacrilegious to like potato latkes. On the one hand they're Jewish and she's a Christian, but on the other they taste a lot like potato pancakes and she's pretty sure she'd never be able to tell the difference between the two if there is any at all.

Dinner conversation doesn't land them anywhere dangerous since Puck spends most of it ego-tripping about how good the food turned out. In his defense, he had no idea a whole chicken could be roasted in a microwave. Addie told him it wasn't her method of choice, but they were short on time before he and Quinn needed to leave and at least it was a medium he was familiar with. With the chicken being, as Addie put it, a screw-up proof dish, she gave him something slightly more challenging with the potato latkes and he's really glad he mentioned to Addie that he's Jewish and that she knew how to make something Jewish because he knows his mom's really going to appreciate him knowing how to make something related to their heritage. The green beans though, he could do without those but Addie wouldn't let him get away without making a vegetable and by the time they were done in the kitchen she pretty much had him convinced that he should be feeding Kelyn more veggies too.

Once Puck is done being proud of himself and Quinn nonchalantly mentions that dinner wasn't bad, they settle into a comfortable conversation about the people who annoy them the most at their school as they partake in some of the leftover pie Quinn made.

Eventually, they have to rush out of Foster's because they've lost track of time and they're running late leaving to pick up Kelyn. Quinn hesitates for a fraction of a second before climbing in to the passenger side of Puck's truck. What if someone saw her in it? But she already agreed, it'd look weird to back out now, and if she did it would mean the night would end right here, right now, and she's not ready for that. She climbs in and they drive in silence for the few minutes it takes to get to Kelyn's friend's house. Puck was right, it was nearby.

Puck gets out of the truck as soon as he parks it in front of the house. Quinn tries to stare out the window, eyes fixed on the look-a-like houses in the subdivision (so she's not watching him and so she doesn't look around the truck and learn anything more about him). She assumed she'd move to the bench in the back or Kelyn would get in the back, so she's surprised when Kelyn gets in the front before Puck slides in. She's quickly enveloped in a hug from the girl and she can't help smiling because it's nice to see her again.

Kelyn spends a few minutes talking a mile a minute, telling Quinn absolutely everything that's happened since she last saw her temporary babysitter. Then, to Quinn's confusion, she suddenly stops talking. "Noah," she pleads quietly, reaching to clutch his arm.

Then, Quinn see's what's captured the girl's attention. They're on a narrow road again, pitch black out in the country except for three sets of bright headlights headed their way on the opposite side of the road.

"It's alright," Puck promises his sister. He turns up the radio and starts singing along softly without a second thought to who else happens to be in the truck right now. This is what his sister needs, and there's nothing that's going to stop him from doing it.

He's singing along to Guns 'N Roses "Don't Cry," and it seems fitting somehow. They both hear the young girl's breath hitch as the cars pass by them. After they quickly do, he manages to wiggle out of his sister's grip so he can wrap an arm around her in a brief one-armed hug before returning his hand to the wheel. He keeps singing for about another minute until the song's over just to make sure she's calmed down. Kelyn stays pretty quiet for the rest of the ride to Quinn's house, instead opting to lean against her brother's side and start to drift off to sleep.

As they're approaching Dudley road, noticing Kelyn's state, Quinn whispers instructions, "You can just drop me at the corner. I'll walk from there."

"What?" Puck questions because that seems really weird to him. Who would opt to walk when they could get a ride?

"It's only a couple blocks. And this way you go less out of your way," Quinn says, knowing it's a weak argument.

To both teen's surprise, Kelyn speaks up, "If it's only a couple of blocks then it's not really out of our way, is it?"

"Right," Puck confirms his sister's logic.

Quinn sighs heavily and tries to quickly conjure up another excuse.

As Quinn's trying to think of another lie, Puck realizes, "Is there some reason I can't drop you at your house? Like you don't want your parents to possibly see you getting dropped off?"

Yeah, her parents probably would have questions if they saw her get dropped off by him. The only time they seemed to get involved was when it was inconvenient for her and when it really didn't matter. She confirms that he's right without really saying it by instead admitting vaguely, "It's a little more complicated than that."

"Well that's too bad," Puck begins, "because I can't just let a girl out to walk home on her own in the dark. Especially with Kel here. What kind of example would I be setting if I did that?"

Quinn instructs Kelyn, "Never ever walk around at night by yourself, even when you're older than I am." She asks Puck, "There. Better?"

He was giving her a ride home, he was doing something nice, and here she was making it difficult. Sure he'd like to have absolutely no problem dropping her off in the middle of nowhere and driving away. But he did have Kelyn with him, who thought he was a better guy than that. And to his great annoyance he did actually have a conscious that would probably decide to show up in a situation like this if he let her out where she wanted and something bad ended up happening to her. His conscious only made appearances occasionally but he was sure it would here. Deciding that playing dirty was probably his best bet, he asks his sister, "What do you think we should do Kel? Should we let Quinn out where she wants so she can walk a couple blocks _alone_ in the _dark_?"

Quinn glares at him over his sister's head and he doesn't really mind, likes getting any reaction out of her.

"We should drop her off at her house," Kelyn declares.

"Okay," Puck agrees.

Quinn knows from the past couple weeks that she can't say no to Kelyn so she relents tightly, "Fine."

A couple minutes later as they're heading down her street she considers telling them the wrong house, but then it'd probably be just her luck that they'd stay and watch her go in and she couldn't get into the wrong house. And she didn't want to get caught lying by Kelyn, that seemed really wrong and not worth the possibility of her parents see Puck drop her off. So she tells Puck the correct house and grabs her bag before he comes to a stop, preparing to jump right out. But, as soon as the truck does stop, Kelyn leans over and hugs her again. All of the dread and worry about how she's being dropped off just kind of melts away then and she hugs the girl back tightly, whispers that she missed her and she can call any time. And when her attention tears away from the girl as she briefly glances to Puck there's something about the way he's looking at her and his sister there hugging, she doesn't know what it is, but it's not insignificant.

Kelyn pulls away from her and she does too. She puts on her best smile and bids Kelyn a goodnight. She gets out, holding the door open still, and politely thanks Puck for the ride and says goodnight to him too.

" 'Night," he says back and waves, which seems odd and out of place until the arm he's waving with "accidentally" slips and hits the horn on his steering wheel (repeatedly). "Whoops," he says dryly.

She glares at him again. She really, really wants to tell him that she hates him because right now, after that little stunt that surely got if not her parent's attention then at least lots of her neighbors, she does actually hate him a bit. Saying "I hate you," isn't a nice or appropriate thing to say in front of Kelyn though and while she could do that to Puck, she can't do that to Kelyn so she bites her tongue.

"Told you I'd pay you back for that tomato," Puck says, by way of explaining his jackass like actions.

With a fake sweet smile, she promises, "And now I'll get you back for this."

"Whatever cheerleader," he says, brushing off her threat.

Quinn really wants to continue this little battle right now, it doesn't sit well with her that she's not winning. But then again Puck doesn't seem to care about the example he's setting for his sister who actually seems bored with the whole exchange, whereas she does care about the effects this could have on Kelyn. So she just smiles one last time and turns and walks into her house resolved to have to settle Puck's payback later.

When she gets inside her parents practically pounce on her asking if that was a boy they saw in the truck she got out of. She lies easy enough that yes, it was, he's a troubled Jewish boy- they know how those are- who's one of the people she tutors, he's Wednesday's. Her parents buy it easily- thanks in part to all the scotch they've consumed by this hour of the night and also in part to the fact that they're always quick to trust prejudicial comments. They'll have more questions when they're sober, but Quinn's pretty sure she can avoid seeing them like that for at least another day so maybe they'll forget. They're not going to like that she got a ride from a boy who wasn't Finn, who they told her to go after.

(She's going to buy "Don't Cry" too even though Guns 'N Roses also is not at all her taste in music. She won't need to listen to it as often because she'll hear it when she closes her eyes and concentrates just a little. She's thinking about it and she knows it, but she tells herself that it's just that the song was catchy and he has a surprisingly good voice. Really, it's just one of many moments involving him that she'll keep replaying in her head.)

-o-o-o-

_Got UR car back?_

Quinn's always kind of hated it when people abbreviate "you" or "your" in text messages. She doesn't mind abbreviating in texts, she does it all the time, but for those words it's only two more letters to complete them, why abbreviate? Normally when receiving a text that uses either word these are the first thoughts she has. Not with this text thought. Her first reaction to this text is a smile, which Santana is quick to question her about. She lies, tells her it's from Finn, but she waits for Santana's attention to leave her to text back the boy that has been the other girl's.

Despite his stunt the previous night, part of her wishes she could tell him she needs a ride, sneak into his truck after school without anyone noticing, have to spend the afternoon in her cheer uniform so she doesn't have to have him drive by her house. But she does have her car back and the only reason her parents didn't have more questions for her this morning was because she got out of the house before they got up so she shouldn't risk having him drive her home anyway. She texts back simply: _Yes_.

She's surprised and smiling again when she gets another text from him towards the end of lunch: _Just swiped some sheet music from the library._

_Because using the internet would have been too free and easy_, she responds.

_I like living my life more dangerously, prude,_ he returns.

_Sure, that's what you're doing. Delinquent_, she texts under her desk during her last class.

_Delinquent and proud of it,_ he texts back within a minute.

Not understanding how he was able to text so quickly while in class and not get caught, she questions, _How are you texting back so quick? Where are you?_

_7-11_, is his reply.

_You're ditching?_

_Dur. _

_How intelligent of you. _

_What good is life science ever going to do me?_

_Looks like you won't find out. _

_Whatever nerd. _

_Can't text anymore. Unlike you I'm in class and I think my teacher is catching on. See you later_, she sends him. Really, she texts in her classes all the time and she probably would have gotten away with it longer, but texting him means thinking about him and she swore to herself that she wasn't doing that anymore (not that she ever had, mind you).

As he's filling a slushie, he feels a little like he got blown off, but on the other hand she did say she'd be seeing him later. It occurred to him that they never made plans to do anything today, to have these lessons he supposedly owed her, but he'd planned on seeing her and apparently she planned on seeing him. Funny how that worked out.

-o-o-o-

Luckily, when Quinn gets home, her mom is gone and her dad hasn't gotten back from work yet. She spends quite a few minutes staring at her closet. Today is a Thursday and lately Thursday's have been surprising her. His mom (their mom- damn, she thought she'd conditioned herself to that by now) was coming home tomorrow and things would probably go back to normal in his (_their_) life and she's pretty sure they both know that she doesn't expect any further pay back for her babysitting. It could all be over again today. And it all probably should be over again today. Finn tried to talk to her after school and she gave him an excuse and raced home instead. That wasn't right. Finn was a good guy and one she had been and should be going after. This hanging out with Puck wasn't right and she needed to stop it. She's known since the beginning that it's needed to stop, it doesn't fit in the life she pretends to have, but the excuses to keep it were too easy. The excuses are few and as thin as can be now though, so she knows she should let this be the last night. And what does one wear for a last night spent with someone that should have never meant anything (but does, all the same)?

She eventually realizes that she can't spend but a few more minutes at home if she wants to get out before her dad gets home so she decides on a sundress with a sweetheart neckline and pinkish, reddish, and light purple flowers painted on the very light grey fabric in a watercolor-looking style. She picks out a matching pink cardigan and flat sandals quickly and races back out the door with her things. She knows what Addie will think about her wearing a dress (again), but she owns far more dresses than she does anything else so it wasn't like she was dressing up for him (just trying to look especially good).

Meanwhile, Puck picks up Kelyn and finds his plans altered. He's pretty sure that if he wanted to, he could go by Foster's any day next week or the one after and find her there. But Finn's been talking more and more about how he wants to ask her out and even if there's technically nothing happening between them, it's not right to be spending any sort of time with your best friend's girlfriend. So he knows, even though he could find her and hang out pretty easily any time he wanted, today should probably be the last time he sees her out side of school alone.

Yet they aren't going to be alone. Not as alone as he thought at least. Kelyn got in his truck after school and told him that her friend asked her over again, but that whole thing was getting out of hand. He hadn't actually thought about it before, what he'd do with Kelyn, but he couldn't let her spend four out of the four days so far this week with these people who were basically strangers to him. Kelyn, thankfully, didn't put up a fight to go to her friend's house like she had been. Apparently part of the fun of going there had been that they had a ping-pong table, but she had been easily beating her friend Jamie since Tuesday afternoon and she was pretty bored with it now. She especially didn't care if she went there since she got out of her brother the previous night that he'd been hanging out with Quinn while she was at Jamie's and if she skipped his house, then she could see Quinn again too.

When Puck arrives, preceded by Kelyn bursting through the door and racing to her table, Quinn's surprised. She knows she shouldn't be and for a minute she is genuinely happy to see the young girl, but then the thought enters her mind that she wishes this last day was spent alone with him. She immediately feels guilty for thinking it and dives in to a conversation prompted by asking Kelyn what she did at school that day. (The guilt and ensuing conversation are enough to distract herself from remembering that the thing that caused them was that she wanted to spend time with Puck alone. And that wasn't meaningless.)

While his sister yammers on to Quinn, Puck tunes his guitar a bit. After they dropped Quinn off the previous night, since Puck didn't mention to his sister that he'd seen Quinn since they both last saw her, Kelyn had some questions about how he had obviously spent some time with her and she wanted to know what they'd been doing. He told her simply that he owed Quinn for babysitting her for free, so as payback he was teaching her how to play the guitar. (The next moment sticks in his mind because Kelyn tells him that she was relieved. She didn't want him to say that Quinn was actually his girlfriend, because every girl he ever mentions as being with like that, is never around long and she likes Quinn, wants her to be around a while. He thought his sister never caught on to the things he does that he never tells her about, doesn't want her to know about, and it makes him feel pretty low because it's one of those moments where he thinks that his sister would be better off without him in her life, better off if he never existed.) So the plan for the day was clear. He made sure he went over it again on the drive over: he'd be teaching Quinn how to play and Kelyn would do her homework. Since that idea bummed his sister out (and he could sympathize with the idea of just doing homework sounding like a really bad afternoon) he suggests that maybe Quinn would be willing to do something with her after she's done with her homework (not planning on suggesting it to Quinn, because based on who she's been with his sister, he just expects her to be that good).

Puck's plan is exactly what goes down for about the first hour. Kelyn does her homework, one of them occasionally helping her, and Puck leads Quinn through attempting the song on the sheet music he stole. The song is "Hey There Delilah" by The Plain White T's. He makes it clear that it's not a song he wants to encourage anyone to play, but it's relatively easy.

When Kelyn finishes her homework she tries to just watch her brother keep telling Quinn she's doing something wrong, listen to Quinn insult him, listen to her brother return an insult, and watch this cycle play out over and over, but really, it's boring her to death. She has her brother let her out of their side of the booth and she talks to Foster for a while, he lets her play with the soda gun and attempts to convince her that dusting glasses would be a game- she's not falling for that. She wanders back to the booth where her brother and Quinn are doing the exact same thing and if she's being honest, it sounds like Quinn is playing the song right to her, she doesn't know what her brother could still possibly be "teaching."

Puck is once again telling Quinn that she's not playing the song at the right pace when Kelyn interrupts them finally. She announces, "I'm so bored. I'm done with my homework, can't we do something else now?"

Quinn doesn't consider trying to come up with something to placate the girl so she could continue her lesson. Instead, she tries to come up with something to do and asks Puck, "Do you still have your baseball stuff in your truck?"

"No," he immediately shoots down, "we're not playing baseball."

"Why not?" Kelyn asks confused. Why would her brother, who's played baseball for as long as she can remember, not want to play?

"Because I'm better than him," Quinn interjects with a smirk before Puck can respond.

"You are not," Puck denies.

"Prove it," Quinn challenges, knowing he doesn't back down from challenges.

"Fine," he agrees, not realizing he just did exactly what she wanted. He gets up and heads for the front door as he calls, "Kel will be on my team. The Puckerman's against the Crazy Christian."

"You're going to make your sister be on the losing team. That's so mean of you," Quinn retorts as she follows behind him with Kelyn.

Twenty minutes into the game Kelyn ends up switching sides. She didn't want to be on the losing team. Twenty more minutes after that Puck's had enough of this humiliation. He's convinced Quinn must have some insanely rare special ability that inclines her to be freakishly good at sports because there's no other explanation for a girl being better than him.

When they get back inside Quinn thinks that Addie must have an inkling that today will be the last day they're all there because she's started laying out a feast. It makes sense that they'd be able to deduce that, Quinn thinks, since she know every one of them mentioned when Puck and Kelyn's mom was returning and her previous condition and absence was the only reason they were there in the first place. She volunteers to help Addie out in the kitchen with the last few dishes she's making and she's glad when the older woman doesn't make any of her usual insinuations- she's not sure she can handle it today, the usual pretending that Addie's so, so wrong for making them. They all eat together, her, Puck, Kelyn, Addie, and Foster. It feels more like a family dinner than the many meals she eats with her parents, but she tries to erase that thought from her mind because she knows it's all going away today.

After dinner, and all of them helping Addie clean up, Addie retires to her house and Foster's occupied by an old friend who stops in for drink and a chat every Thursday night (has to bring his own alcohol given the state of the liquor license, but they're good enough friends that that's okay). Quinn keeps waiting for the moment that Kelyn says she wants to go home or Puck insists that they do so Kelyn can get to bed since tomorrow is a school day. It's only a few minutes to eight though and apparently neither of the Puckermans want to leave.

While Kelyn runs through a list of games, asking Quinn if she brought any of them, Quinn digs through her bag for something for them to do. Eventually, she finds a Netflix envelope, which she intended to send back by now. Since she has her laptop, she suggests watching it and Kelyn eagerly agrees. Puck hates the idea completely. Honestly, she's not crazy about the idea of watching _Hannah Montana: The Movie _either. She got it along with some other Disney movies to have on hand with Kelyn. She had sent the others back, but this one was one they never got to thanks to the unexpected visit by Puck on Wednesday of last week and the unexpected events of last Thursday. She's willing to watch to spend more time here with them though, and apparently either to stay or for his sister, so is Puck because he grumblingly agrees.

About an hour into the movie Puck wonders what it is about cowboys girls find attractive. Furthermore, maybe he should consider some Southern state as a potential place to live when he finally leaves Lima because he could totally rock a cowboy look and it'd probably get him even more girls than he does now, which would be awesome. Thinking of girls… he glances over at the one on the other side of his sister. His sister dosed off on his arm about forty minutes into the movie and he had glanced over to see her sleeping at the same time Quinn did. Then there was this moment, _what should they do? _But Kelyn was sleeping on his arm and they shouldn't really do anything anyway so he keeps watching the crappy movie that makes his mind wander to things like what would be the daily tasks of a cowboy. He figures Quinn has got to be in the same mind-numbing state induced by the movie and despite the awkward-moment-that-wasn't the last time he glanced that direction, he's chanced another one. Only this time, she's not glancing back because she's asleep too.

Quinn hadn't meant to fall asleep. After that moment where both her and Puck noticed that Kelyn was asleep, she keeps watching the movie because he does and because it's what they should be doing. But she's still hoping for a moment while the younger girl is asleep where they say something to each other, something that feels like closure for this whole irrational thing where they've actually been hanging out and have gotten to know each other in a way, on her part, that no one else knows her. But she's had early cheer practices all week and thanks to spending all afternoon and evening with Puck the previous night, she hadn't gotten any of her ample homework done and had to stay up really late to finish. She tries to fight it when her eyes start to feel heavy, but it's a losing battle as a lot of things have been for her lately.

Puck considers what to do when he realizes both of the girls are asleep. First of all, he knows he can stop the movie. But then what would he do and it can't have much longer (and he kind of wants to know what will happen), so he leaves it on. Once it does end, he really doesn't know what to do. He should probably wake Kelyn and go home. But then what does he do about Quinn who's asleep, leaning against the wall on her side of the booth?

As he sits and wonders, part of his decision is made for him because Foster's friend lets out a loud, obnoxious bark of a laugh and Quinn startles awake. Furrowing her brows in confusion, it takes Quinn a second to sort out what happened. She asks noticing the girl still asleep beside her, "How did that not wake her up?"

"Kel's a real solid sleeper," he answers, "Unfortunately, she'd probably sleep through a fire alarm."

Quinn nods, but a yawn interrupts her from saying anything.

Knowing the movie is over and the question is probably coming, Puck answers preemptively, "The movie just ended. And in case you or Kel were wondering what happened, I watched it. It didn't get any better. Still sucked."

"Yeah, there wasn't much hope for that getting better," she agrees. His mention of watching it for Kelyn though prompts her to ask, "That's not how you're going to explain the ending to Kelyn though, right?"

" 'Course not," he says honestly. He's surprised he thought of that excuse for watching it so quickly though. But it was a legitimately useful reason for having watched, Kelyn probably would want a recap. "I should probably get Kelyn home," he announces because it really needed to be said.

She glances at her watch and agrees, "Yeah, I should probably head home too. It'll be after ten by the time I get there, my parents should be passed out." She realizes what she said and hopes he takes "passed out" to mean "asleep."

"They can't really be that bad, right? I mean, they bought you a car," Puck points out because he's wondered if she's just being dramatic with not being able to stand her home life. He thinks the things she's told him have fit, have made sense, but they have money and they buy her stuff, how can it be that bad?

"They bought me a car because it'd make me more popular. That's why my dad specifically chose a convertible. I didn't want one, not that they asked, they thought it would make me more enviable," she explains. She never wanted to tell him the whole truth, she was already forced into telling him more than she's ever told anyone besides her sister. But this is probably the last time they'll ever be alone together (the last time they should be) and the last time she could have a real conversation with him. She doesn't like the idea of opening up to anyone at all, but she already knows so much about him (things he's clearly not keen on sharing with people) and maybe that makes it okay to tell him the truth now. She rationalizes that being honest with him could be good practice for the first guy she's in a relationship with who she actually does want to let in. So, she tells him, "My parents do care about me, just in all the wrong ways. They're not happy, with their lives or their marriage- it's why they start drinking at five every night, and pre-dinner cocktails always turns into a drink with dinner, and one, two, three after. They want to escape their lives because they're miserable, and yet they want the same exact life for me. They think it's the only way to be, they think I'd be happy like that, and they don't care if none of that is true."

"What do you want?" he asks, because he can't figure her out, not at all (which he likes). She's always seemed so together at school, so in control and superior, he never even suspected prior to their time here that that may not be who she really is.

The question throws her for a minute. She's not sure anyone has ever asked her anything like that because no one in her life has cared about what she wants. She knows her sister probably does, but maybe she hasn't asked because she assumed she wouldn't know yet or would want the same things she did. There are a lot of things she wants when she really thinks about it. She wants to be with someone who wants her as much as she wants them. She wants a family, one where they only pretend when playing a game that requires it. She wants to love whatever she does. She stumbles on her answer and admits, summing up all her desires, "I want to be happy, and not just pretend to be."

Yeah, he gets that. He tells her, "That's a good goal. The guidance counselor told me I should want that too. You know, when she was telling me to get over my 'anger issues."

She smiles at the way he puts "anger issues" in quotes, like that's not really what's going on with him. Hearing the way he talked about her goal, like it's not necessarily his, prompts her to return the question, "So what do you want then?"

He shrugs, he hasn't thought much about what he wants in life at all. He tries not to take things that seriously. But, thinking about it, he supposes, "I guess the guidance counselor was right, being happy would be nice, getting over my… issues would be good. I kind of just thought it would fade with time though, the anger, but it hasn't. Guess I'll have to work at it a little." As an after thought he adds, "Probably after high school though, being a bully has its perks right now."

"Yeah, I don't really have plans to stop being the person my parents want until after high school. At least it makes me popular and that's better than being invisible. Probably," Quinn agrees.

"Considering some of the things I do to unpopular kids, it's definitely better," Puck reasons with a smirk, thinking of some of the things he's done to his peers.

She smiles too and admits, "You know how you'll throw a slushie at someone sometimes in the halls? I think that's my favorite thing I've ever seen you do. It's the expression of the person you throw it at, I can never help laughing at it."

He smiles proudly and agrees, "Yeah, that's a classic." He suggests, "You should try it some time."

She shakes her head and declines, "I can't. I'm a girl, we fight differently. We use words and sabotage and backstabbing and blackmail, not anything there's physical proof of, that's why we get caught less- emotional scars a lot harder to prove than physical ones."

That makes sense given the very few and rare occasions he's actually seen girls come to blows, though he wishes it would happen more often. "That's too bad. It's fun," he comments. "I could throw one at someone for you, if you want- sort of get the thrill without having to do the action," he proposes.

She considers it, but honestly she's been in an oddly decent mood lately and no one has really been getting to her (except Santana and some of the girls on the team, but she couldn't deal with fellow Cheerio's that way). "I may have to take you up on that sometime," she says because while it may not be necessary at the moment, it could come in handy later.

And not immediately knowing what he wants to say back to that gives him just enough time to get distracted just looking at her. And she's still smiling a little and so is he. (And if she was a different girl or he was a different guy, he'd probably kiss her now, like he would have a lot of moments before. But they are who they are and he still thinks that means their fate is sealed.) He breaks his staring trance after about a minute, clears his throat and says, "I guess Kel's not waking up on her own. I need to get her home though." He gently wakes his sister and tells her they need to leave. She says goodbye to Quinn and sleepily gathers her stuff on the other side of the table.

As the younger girl packs, Quinn quickly gathers her things up as well because she really should be leaving too.

Puck leads his sister to his truck and Quinn isn't far behind hauling her things to her car. He gets Kelyn settled and the girl is practically back a sleep by the time he has her seatbelt on her. He goes around to the driver's side of his truck and pauses. He can hear Quinn behind him, putting her things on her passenger seat, shutting the door, and presumably walking around her car. When he hears her car door open it prompts him to act, now. He walks over to her car, knocks on her passenger window because she's already inside and has it started. As soon as it's rolling down he begins quickly before he loses his nerve, "I'm not good with…people, or words, but, uh, thanks for being so good to Kel." He doesn't want to make as big a deal out of this as it potentially could be so he rushes on before she could respond, "And you know, just cause I know you better now, doesn't mean I'm going to stop calling you Jesus Freak and stuff."

She's not exactly keen on the idea of letting this be another thing with more importance than things between them should have so she plays along. She smiles and responds, "Likewise STD."

He smiles, laughs a little, but before he can say anything (not that he knew what to say, he wasn't used to having these easy conversations with a girl), she ends it before things can get awkward or complicated, "I guess I'll see you around."

"Seems likely," he responds and bids, " 'Night." He turns and walks back to his truck as he hears her call goodnight.

(After he gets home and gets Kelyn to bed and finally gets to end the day and lay down to sleep, there's this thought in his head that won't go away that's telling him it was a good day. But thinking about it, nothing really happened, so he's not quite sure what was so good about it. And he's not quite ready to figure it out.)

-o-o-o-

It's a weird weekend for Puck.

After school on Friday he rushes to pick Kelyn up and then they get to pick up their mom. It's great to have her back and normal again. Kelyn's really happy, which makes him even happier about it. Later, when Kel's gone to bed, his mom tells him how she's sure she's never going to have another "episode" again. Starting therapy in rehab had already helped wonders and she was going to keep it up for as long as needed. They'd be alright, she promised. Despite the fact that it's against his nature to be optimistic, he believes her.

Since his mom is back and there to watch Kelyn, she insists on Saturday that he get back to his carefree, fun, teenage life. He'd shouldered too much responsibility for his age lately and his mom felt bad about that because she blamed herself for it (he blamed his father for making his mother that way in the first place). He takes her up on the encouragement to go out and makes plans with some of the football team- and not another one of those crappy orchard parties.

They spend some time throwing eggs at people, then they shoot them with paintballs, knock down some mailboxes of teachers, and finally, that night, they come across lawn furniture. He's not sure how it was decided that nailing lawn furniture to someone's roof would be awesome, but they had been drinking so that's probably to blame. He's also not sure why he didn't think it was a bad idea to climb up on to a roof while not entirely sober, but he supposes the alcohol's at fault for that too. He's not even sure who they're terrorizing with this prank, but it doesn't really matter anyway, doesn't make it any less cool. He helped someone nail down a table and it's while he's doing a chair by himself that it hits him, the memory of the last time he was on a roof. Just a few days prior he was on Foster's roof and he was listening to Foster insist that he didn't really have a reason not to go after Quinn.

It's so troubling that Foster's words still make sense to him that he stops his task, nearly loses hold of the chair and sends it flying down the roof. That scare brings him back to the present and hanging out with his friends, but the words come back to him once he's home again. Maybe the fact that Finn likes her isn't that much of an obstacle and maybe she doesn't like Finn enough for it to be an obstacle that way either. Maybe Foster had a point there. But the thing that Foster probably didn't have any idea about was that he didn't do relationships and didn't want to change and start doing them. And Quinn, she was clearly a relationship type of girl. Plus, even if he was going to be in a relationship, given his nature, sex would need to be involved and sleeping together wasn't something she was going to be up for. Maybe it wouldn't be their biggest problem if they were to try a relationship, but it'd definitely be one he doesn't see them getting past. And probably not the only thing they wouldn't get past given how different they were. They just seemed doomed. And what was the point of possibly screwing up a friendship for something that wouldn't work out?

(The thing he didn't notice yet was that they'd already overcome some of the things in their way. He could talk to her and didn't find her talking to him even slightly annoying, which couldn't be said of his experiences with any other girl. Plus, the fact that he was even thinking about a relationship with one girl, even in a hypothetical sense, was something he'd never done before and that mattered a lot more than whether or not they had obstacles.)

By the time Sunday morning comes Puck hasn't gotten much sleep. He's been busy wondering about things like when was it that he decided he wanted Quinn anyway? For this particular question he tries to settle his mind by resolving that he wants all hot girls, this is just no different. (He doesn't recognize that she's not just recently hot though, a fact that makes his logic lacking. And the truth is that in some way he's always wanted her, it's just since he's begun to discover who she really is that's made him want her more than any other girl.) But despite all the questions and the less than honest answers he tries to feed himself, by morning he's starting to think that he should take a chance with her, see what happens, before she's Finn's and that's no longer an option.

Sunday afternoon puts a damper on his recently nearly reached conclusions. He goes to the batting cages with Finn (he's got to prove to himself that he doesn't suck at it suddenly) and then he plays basketball with Finn. Finn's on the basketball team and he isn't, so every time they play he knows he's going to lose, but they've been doing this so long it's actually one of the times he never minds losing, he's used to it and it's cool because it's Finn. About fifteen minutes into their one-on-one game he starts to play even worse than normal though. Finn had been talking, as usual, while they'd been playing and he told him that he almost asked Quinn out on Friday. Apparently Finn had gone up to Quinn, planning to man up and ask her out like he wanted to, and while he was, honestly, wussing out, some Cheerios came up to Quinn and mentioned some retreat they were going on that weekend so he took the fact that she wasn't even free to go out with him as an opportunity to completely chicken out. But, Finn tells him, he's definitely going through with it first chance he gets Monday.

Puck jokes and calls Finn pathetic because she's just a girl and how could he chicken out? Really though, he's not entirely present for the rest of the game from that moment on. Finn's going to ask Quinn out and she'll be his and he has a feeling he's always going to be wondering what if. It looks like the fate of this is sealed though, he supposes that tomorrow he should start looking for a new girl, someone who will make him forget about all this, if just for a little while.

-o-o-o-

Quinn's weekend is as bad as she thought it was going to be.

Coach Sylvester somehow managed to make a case for her Cheerio's needing to "decompress" for a weekend if they're going to be any use to her next year. She actually gets multiple supposed "sports" doctors to support her claim, some boosters to donate money to her cause, and then Principle Figgins to agree and pay the rest. That's how all the Cheerios found themselves at a spa a few hours from town for the weekend.

A weekend at a spa would normally sound really good, only thanks to the fact that she'll be surrounded by people from school the entire time, it means that Quinn has to keep pretending. She knows that she's not always pretending because she has become this head cheerleader, Queen Bee quite a bit, but it's still not all she is (she's sure of it), even if she only rarely gets to be anything else. She's always looked forward to the breaks from acting on the weekends though, but she doesn't get it at all this weekend. Except, since she's the head cheerleader, she did get her own room so at least she has that sanctuary.

Nothing she doesn't expect happens this weekend. Well, Brittney and Santana, who are rooming together, seem oddly chummier than usual, but she figures they must have bonded more probably by talking about her behind her back. Oh well.

Coach Sylvester doesn't even try and argue with her when she heads to the nearest church Sunday morning and ditches whatever she wants her to do. After years of cheer camp, which she also always left on Sunday's to attend church, Coach Sylvester seems to have given up that fight.

Being in church is when the thoughts that have been nagging at her and nearly distracting her from everything she's done all weekend catch up with her. Going to church with her parents never feels like really going to church since being with them requires her to play a part and it leaves her sitting there through the service feeling dishonest. On these occasions where she gets to attend a church without them, where no one knows her or expects her to be anything, have always allowed her to simply be there for the service. But really being there for all the right reasons means confronting truths and today her truth has to do with two boys who she hasn't been able to stop thinking about all weekend.

On Friday, just after school ended, Finn came up to her and started talking about their Spanish class and then he started bumbling a bit. She knew what was coming. She could tell where all this was going, it was written all over his face. The fact that he was nervous was cute and under normal circumstances that would have been the only thing she was thinking then. Also, her heart was racing and her breathing was shallow and under normal circumstances she'd say it was because of him (she does try to convince herself of this). But sitting here in church she knows that moment wasn't that simple. She knows that she wasn't thinking that Finn's nervousness was cute, she was praying that it would get the best of him. And she didn't feel like she was having an anxiety attack because he was a cute guy who was asking her out, it was because she was dreading it. He was a great guy, but she didn't really want this anymore. She wanted someone else to be asking her out and she wanted that guy to be the type of guy who would ask her out, only he wasn't.

She leaves church feeling both a bit better and a bit worse. She was forced to admit, in order to not have to pretend while in church like she usually has to, that she has developed…something (that's the only word she's willing to admit so far) for Puck. But Puck wasn't an option, for lots of reasons he was just a bad idea, and she'd already been pursuing Finn. She tries to prepare herself for when Finn does actually ask her out, she's going to have to act happy and she prays that she actually will be. He's a good guy, she should be happy if he wants to be with her (and she will be, but not in the same way).

-o-o-o-

Rarely do things turn out as expected, but that seems to be the way Monday is going for them.

Towards the end of lunch, as she's at her locker alone, Finn comes up to Quinn and he stumbles through it again, but he does ask her out. She smiles and says yes with chipperness in her voice (she's had a lot of practice at this particular type of pretending). They work out plans and she goes to class still smiling, tells her "friends" with a smile too. (She doesn't remember the last time it felt this forced to be happy and she feels guilty that she's not genuinely so.)

-o-o-o-

Puck gets the news via text while he's miraculously actually in his seventh period class. _She said yes! I'm going out with Quinn Fabray! _he reads. He knew it was always a bad idea to actually show up for class.

He tries not to think about the message (he deleted it immediately). He has a test in this class (came as a complete shock to him) so that works as a distraction as he tries to BS his way through it. He makes plans after school with a few of the guys from the football team who aren't on the baseball team so they don't have practice. He doesn't know what they're going to do, probably just hang at Mike's house, but as he's driving there, he ends up not actually heading there.

His mom is hanging out with his sister today. The temp her boss hired to cover for her was scheduled to work through the rest of the week, so his mom has the whole week off. She planned on catching up with them, spending time with them, but she also wanted him to get back to his regular life so he's taking her up on that still and letting her have time with just Kelyn. It leaves him free and he had made plans to do exactly what she wanted, exactly what he wanted: to return to his normal life. Yet here he is, driving around and avoiding it.

He's not that surprised when he finds himself heading towards Foster's. By the time he gets there and puts his truck in park he figures out the source of what must be making him want to talk to her. He figures that she's about to go out with his best friend, who doesn't know a lot of the things that have been going on with him lately that she does, and he just needs to make sure she's not going to tell (because she's Finn's now and it can't be anything more than that).

He finds her exactly where he expects to. He's glad when neither Foster nor Addie seem to be in sight, he'd rather get out of here unnoticed by them. She has her headphones in again so she doesn't look up from her work until he's sitting down right across from her.

She's surprised that he's there and pulls out her earphones immediately. She wants to ask him what he's doing back here (he's not supposed to show up anymore, they couldn't keep doing this), but she doesn't want to imply that it means something that he's here, that it's ever meant anything, so she says nothing at all and waits for him to speak.

"Heard the news," he says flatly.

"Yeah, it's about time," she responds expectedly.

"Finn doesn't know anything," he begins (her heart starts to race at the possible direction this could go), "the stuff about my mom and all. I know you're not going to tell the whole school or anything. But I wanted to make it clear that though he's my best friend, he doesn't know and I don't want him to."

"I won't tell him anything, I promise," she says, hoping the disappointment she feels at the direction he took doesn't come through in her tone. A little hope seeping through, she asks, "You came all the way out here today for that?"

He shrugs and offers, "I knew where you'd be now." He adds, "Besides, didn't know how much time I had to say it before it could be too late."

Finn must not have told him when they were going out. She lets him know, "You had till Friday actually." Seeing his brow furrow at that because why would they wait five days to go out, she explains, "My parents think I tutor every week night and if things work out, they'll want to meet him soon. I can't risk him slipping up and telling them that I don't really tutor. So, as far as he knows, I can't ever see him on a week night until I'm done being a tutor."

He was hoping for a reason that made a lot less sense. He offers, attempting conversation as if nothing has changed, "That's a good call. Finn's not great at lying."

"I figured," she agrees.

Silence settles. Unlike some of the recent previous times it has, they weren't having a good time, they weren't smiling, they were just there, fully aware of what they had found themselves wanting despite knowing better, and fully aware that it wasn't ever going to happen.

Quinn knows that this isn't a situation that she should be putting herself in, being here alone with him. It doesn't matter that she didn't start it, she knows better so she needs to end it. She smiles a little and lies as she gathers her things, "I should get going actually. My parents requested that I cut my 'tutoring' short and actually come home for dinner tonight." She stands up and pulls her bags with her and says with the finality that it has to have this time, "Bye."

He doesn't give any thought to whether or not she was telling the truth. Instead, as he's sitting in this spot, as soon as she began talking about leaving this panic settled in him. Technically, the girl that was quickly preparing to walk away from him wasn't anyone's. Plans to go out doesn't mean much, if anything, so she wasn't Finn's until Friday at the soonest. And today was Monday. And did he really want to spend even another week or another day wondering what if, if he didn't have to?

He knows his answer to that question and he's ready to admit now that the prospect of losing her is undeniably real, that he's always known his answer to that question. So he gets up and hopes he hasn't been sitting here thinking longer than he realized. He hasn't been, he finds out as soon as he's jogged to the door and opened it because she's there putting her bags on her passenger seat and shutting the door. She catches him there as she's walking around her car to the driver's side and waves because she assumes he's just leaving too.

He's reached the conclusion that it's now or never and he doesn't like the idea of it being never, which is why he's out here in the first place. "Hold up," he calls and jogs over to her. He's done this a hundred times before, he has no reason to be nervous, he tells himself.

She knows that she should probably get in her car and leave, but she doesn't really want to so she's stopped like he asked, standing by her closed driver's side door, arms crossed across her waist and keys clutched in her hand.

He stops right in front of her, closer than he's purposefully stood to her before. He just looks at her for a minute, holding her curious gaze and asking himself if wants this as much as he's been thinking he does. His certain answer to that question causes him to act quickly, pulling her to him with his right hand, holding her jaw in place with his left so that his lips meet hers. He kisses her shortly, softly, before he pulls back a little. He counts one Mississippi in his head, takes the fact that she hasn't hit him or shoved him or yelled at him as a good sign, and kisses her again, more forcefully, more eagerly.

She hesitates for a second when he kisses her again. She shouldn't be doing this and she still knows that. But she also knows that she wants to. So she kisses him back. She let's her keys fall to the ground and she clutches at his shirt instead, keeping him close.

A brief moment of logic coming back to her, she pushes him away slightly and states (because this probably isn't enough to make changes), reminding him in case somehow forgetting was what prompted him, "I'm going out with Finn, on Friday."

Yeah, he hadn't forgotten that, but, trying to be smart, maybe he shouldn't jump the gun making trouble about it either. So he simply smirks and says, "So?" He takes her ensuing smile as a sign that he gave the right answer and he kisses her again.

(Here's something you should know: When she fell asleep on his couch that night, she woke up twenty minutes later and found herself covered in a blanket with him still sitting next to her watching TV. She could have left then, but instead she closed her eyes and went back to sleep. She's always been good at pretending and lying, but if she's being honest- and she rarely is- she's been lying to herself about him less and less for a while now. Pretty soon, she may not be lying about how she feels about him anymore at all.)

* * *

**A/N: Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the second half of the chapter!**

**Next chapter title:**_ I believe that fate has brought us here, and we should be together, but we're not- _which is from "I Try." Personally, I prefer the Ben Taylor version of the song to the original Macy Gray.

**Remember, feedback= love so please REVIEW!**


	6. Chapter 4

**A/N: First, as always, thank you so much to the wonderful people reviewing! **

Second, phew. I can't believe I actually finished this before the new episodes returned. Setting that goal for myself was completely ridiculous for me and yet here it is longer than expected. I wrote over a hundred pages of this story in a month (not to mention a few dozen for my classes) and it has officially exceeded the maximum average paperback novel length. So if you're reading right now, know that in reading this story you have basically read a Quick themed book.

Third, there is no way I'm going to be able to keep up this pace of writing. I'm quickly approaching the middle of my school term, which all of you in college or grad school know means mid-terms. But given the shortness of my terms they just start laying on a deluge of work for a few weeks spanning from the middle to nearly the end. Though I expect next chapter to be rather short given that it doesn't cover a very wide span of time (don't hold me to this as I am always wrong on this sort of estimation), I have yet to write more than twenty words of it and really don't see time to return to it for a bit. Though, as I do love writing this, I will try.

Fourth, yeah, you read correctly above, this chapter is longer. I couldn't break it up either, sorry. I hope all of you get a chance to finish the lengthy chapter before the new episodes start, which brings me to…

Fifth, some of you may be wondering what I'll do with this story when the new episodes do air. If there's some Quick in the next episode (I've avoided spoilers so if you know anything, please don't tell me, I like surprises) or if there's Puck and Quinn with other people in these last nine episodes, it doesn't really matter for the purposes of this story. This story is planned and will be executed as planned regardless of what happens in canon from now on. Yep, it's becoming an AU, but given the history I've given them, it pretty much already was (depending on your definition of AU of course).

Sixth, I'm going to shut up now and let you get to reading if you haven't already skipped ahead. This chapter gets to a point that many of you mentioned looking forward to so I hope you enjoy it:D

* * *

**Cheated Hearts

* * *

**

_IV. I believe that fate has brought us here, and we should be together, but we're not_

(Here's something you should know: Quinn Fabray and Noah Puckerman are sneaking around together behind everyone's backs. Despite the fact that it is therefore not set in reality, it'll still be the most real relationship either one of them ever has. Even if neither will call it a relationship.)

Kissing by Quinn's car on Monday led to making out in the back seat of Puck's truck until his phone wouldn't stop ringing because his mom wanted him home to have dinner as a family. They don't talk about it and, actually, they barely talk at all. They don't make plans to see each other again, to repeat this…occurrence again. He says he needs to get home and she agrees that she probably should. He pauses when they're both out of the back of his truck and kisses her before she can walk back to her car, just briefly. Then he climbs back into his truck, the driver's seat this time, and leaves while she's getting into her car.

Tuesday is when things really start to get interesting. Brunch is pretty short, but towards the end of it he finds her at her locker and actually approaches her, in public and everything. He stands a ways a way despite the fact that there aren't but a few people in this hall at the moment. He doesn't bother with pleasantries, he simply suggests, "How about we find a supply closet during lunch and see what happens?"

Quinn knows it should sound like a bad idea to her, but instead she finds herself smiling (blushing just a bit too) and asking knowingly, "Don't you already know where all the supply closets are and shouldn't you know the best one by now?"

He smiles because she didn't say no and answers, "Yeah, the one closest to the special ed classes." He checks, "See you there at lunch?"

She smirks and responds, "Maybe." She turns and leaves for class before he can say anything else and possibly get out of her that "maybe" was a lie and she actually meant "yes."

-o-o-o-

Lunch comes and about ten minutes into her closet escapade with Puck, Quinn's mind begins to nag at her a bit. He's getting…handsy. Normally, she has no problem stopping a guy in a situation like this and then pretending to pray (just to screw with them a little, they have to be clear on how serious she is about her abstinence). But now, she knows his hands are traveling upwards, seemingly seeking the destination of her chest, and she's not finding her voice or even feeling the urge to stop him at all. She knows she's not going to sleep with him during lunch in a closet at school, or at all, she would never let herself. Yet what she normally very much wants to stop from happening with other guys, she doesn't want to stop with him. That idea freaks her out a little, so she lets herself get lost in him again so she can stop thinking.

She's successful at forgetting about her worries for less than another ten minutes because it suddenly occurs to her that while she's been getting lost in him, in letting him make her feel, in order to keep her in that state his hands had traveled south to her behind at some point. She honestly has no idea when they changed direction. She just knows that all her time with him has felt unbelievably good. But the fact that she didn't notice and the fact that his hands are there in the first place (something that she has let a couple other guys get away with, but not for more than a few seconds), brings all her freaked out feelings bubbling up again. She stops kissing him and pushes him away a little. Before he can ask her what's going on or, hopefully, before he can jump to any conclusions, she lies, "I can't spend _all_ lunch in here. Too many people will notice if I'm not around."

He could buy that. Those Cheerio girls are always out to get each other and one thing out of place and he could totally see them pouncing on her. Yet, then she squirms out of his grasp and she's not meeting his eyes anymore. He has a feeling that this is about something else. He can figure that out later though because right now he's got something else to do that he's done many times before, but doing it now is making his stomach feel queasy. He means to say it, but the words aren't coming out. She takes a half-step back from him (can't really do much more considering the limited space) and the thought that that's leading to her turning and leaving prompts him to finally say what he wanted to. He begins casually, "So, my mom wanted to spend the rest of the day with Kel. Catch up with her, go shopping, take her to a movie or something." Just to make sure there's no confusion about what he's saying, he spells it out for her, "I'll have the apartment to myself."

Considering what just happened here the idea of being alone with him at his home kind of terrifies her. But the idea that if she doesn't say yes (he knows she doesn't have anything else to do after school) and then maybe they won't ever have an occurrence like they had today in the closet or yesterday outside Foster's terrifies her too. She quickly decides which possibility terrifies her more and suggests, "Four o'clock?"

"We get out at three," he says confused, without realizing that it makes him sound eager.

She sighs and explains, "And first there's talking to people after school usually and then I need to go home and change, which could possibly lead to running into and getting held up by my parents." Considering that she won't be at Foster's (where she doesn't want to get caught in her uniform so no one who happens to walk in there will be able to identify her by it) she supposes she doesn't have to go home and possibly see her parents. She suggests, "Although I suppose I don't have to go home and change. You probably like the uniform anyway? That was the point of choosing these specifically."

"Yeah, I like it," he says with a smirk and an appreciative scan of her body. He clarifies though, "I like looking at it. But, honestly, you should go home and get out of it. It's …thick, kind of heavy fabric. Not really the best for touching. I prefer you in other things."

She can feel a bit of heat on her cheeks and she rolls the right corner of her bottom lip between her teeth. She ignores the compliment that she believes he gave (most guys preferred her in her uniform, preferred her playing her usual role, but he didn't and that was good) and questions, "You think there's going to be touching?"

He closes that half-step she created, brushes his finger tips from the top of her bare shoulders all the way down her arms, and promises huskily, "There's going to be a lot of touching."

She wasn't looking at him as he touched her. Instead her head was down and her eyes were closed and she was biting her lower lip again and trying not suck in a breath like she felt like doing at the goose bumps he was giving her. She feels his finger on her chin, nudging it up, and she opens her eyes quickly hoping he didn't notice they were closed. She meets his eyes and she's surprised that he's not kissing her because she assumed that's why he moved her face back up in the first place. But instead he's just smiling softly and looking at her and she was going to leave, she knows she should leave, but instead, she finds herself leaning forward and closing the small space between them and kissing him.

She doesn't make it to lunch. (And she doesn't really feel the least bit bad about that.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn puts a lot of thought into what to wear to Puck's. She doesn't want to look like she's dressing up for him because while she wouldn't normally think a guy would notice, his earlier comment about her uniform makes her think that maybe he would. She wasn't wiling to risk that just as she wasn't willing to possibly end up in an un-ladylike position, which was very possible if she wore a skirt or dress. So she goes casual (but still nice) and wears something that despite showing ample skin, couldn't be called indecent. She puts on shorts, a cute blouse, and flat sandals.

When she gets to his door, Quinn considers not knocking, but just turning around and walking away. She's early anyway (her parents weren't home to take up any of her time, thankfully) so she could go somewhere and think about this more, think about how she shouldn't be here. For as loud as the voice in her head is shouting that this is a bad idea though, there's something else in her that moves her hand forward and forces her to knock.

He opens the door so quick it startles her. What startles her more is that she can hear voices and before thinking about the possibility that they may not be real, panic gets the best of her and she asks, "Are there people here?"

Puck is confused for a minute because that's a weird thing to say right now, but then his senses come back to him. "Oh," he realizes and turns around to head for the source of the noise. Since she, thankfully, followed, he explains as he searches for the remote, "_Die Hard _is on. Couldn't help watching."

"You can keep watching if you want," she suggests, mostly just to see how he would respond.

"Or you could distract me from it," he suggests in return with a smirk, because as much as _Die Hard_ is an awesome movie, he knows he'd much rather be with her.

He walks over to where she is at the edge of the living room, where it meets the kitchen. Her breath hitches and her heart starts pounding and she realizes that they're in his apartment alone and as much as she wants this, she can't go through with it unless she knows things she doesn't want won't happen. When he's eliminated all but a few inches between them she finds her voice and declares, "I'm not having sex with you." On second thought, she clarifies, "Not today and not ever."

He hooks a finger under her ever-present necklace, runs it around the chain, lets his thumb pad over the pendant, and responds, "Yeah. I kind of figured."

That wasn't the response she was expecting from him. She checks slowly, "And you're…_okay_ with that?"

"I invited you here, didn't I?" he questions in return, trying not to make a big deal out of this even know he knows they're both aware of how this completely contradicts his typical behavior. (But he wants this, regardless of the conditions or consequences.) Returning to expected behavior he warns, "My hands may not be okay with that though. You know, they have a mind of their own."

"Really?" she questions, eyebrow raised.

"Yeah, if you don't like something they're doing you're going to have to figure out a way to stop them because me, I have no power over them," he continues on.

"I'm sure I can find a suitable way to keep them occupied," she ventures as her hands take hold of his, intertwining their fingers as she leans forward and kisses him.

Quinn ends up spending the next few hours at Puck's. There's time spent on his couch where she may have let him go a bit farther than she expected herself to let him (and she has to try really hard not to think about it later, not to worry). There's time spent watching an episode of ER that comes on where they start a kissing game- make out every time Dr. Benton comes on screen because they don't like his character. There's Puck whining about being hungry but too lazy to do anything about it (because honestly, he'd rather be making out and remain hungry) so Quinn carefully examines his fridge and makes them grilled cheese sandwiches (because they have enough of the ingredients wouldn't likely be noticed as missing).

Eventually, Quinn leaves because his mom and sister will come home eventually and they're probably lucky that they hadn't in the four hours she'd been there. Plus, she shouldn't be spending this much time with him (any time with him) and she knows it.

(When she does leave, he follows her to his door and kisses her as soon as she turns around to say goodbye. Instead of saying the goodnight she intended, when he pulls away she tells him simply that it was a good day and she'd see him tomorrow. He smiles and nods in return, doesn't say anything because something that would make him sound stupid would probably slip out- like the excited yes! he felt like screaming.)

-o-o-o-

Puck's mom comes home with his sister only twenty minutes after Quinn's left. Once Kelyn goes to bed, his mom sits with him in the living room, pretending to read a magazine while he watches TV, but actually trying to talk to him. She asks him what he did today, to which he responds vaguely that he just hung out with friends.

Eventually she gets to the point she clearly intended to make when she mentions, trying for casual and not even slightly pulling it off, "Kelyn and I ran into Finn while we were at the mall. He was there trying to find something to wear on some big date he has Friday night. He said it was with a really great girl, seemed real excited about it."

From experience Puck knew that that wasn't all his mom had to say and at this moment he didn't know what he'd say anyway. What was he supposed to say? Agree that Quinn was great? Sure, he could do that and maybe add on that she spent over four hours with him today and not at all in a "just friends" way. He doesn't have anything to say that has a possibility of not sounding bitter and he's too angry to pretend that he's not right now. So he says nothing and waits his mother out.

After giving her son five minutes to respond in any way, even by changing the topic or telling her about anything in his life, she gives up on him talking. She makes her point, "You should copy Finn, you know. Find a girl to have a real relationship with instead of the… short, casual ones you always seem to be in. You know, you may actually find you like having a real relationship, having someone who gets you and is always there for you."

Someone who gets him and has been there for him…that leads him to think things he knows better than to think about. This isn't the first time his mom has said something like this to him because she has this idea (that's not entirely wrong) that he's not happy with his life and he'd be happier with a real relationship. Despite the fact that everything is indeed different now, he responds as if it isn't, "I'll keep that in mind, 'Ma, but 'someone who gets me' doesn't sound like it could be nearly as much fun as 'girl who's name I don't know."

"Noah," she begins warningly.

"I know, 'Ma. I know," he cuts her off. They've had this conversation probably a dozen times every week since he turned twelve and his mom caught him making out in his room with a girl that used to live on the floor below them. She doesn't like they type of relationships he has, but he swears he's careful and that he doesn't mislead a girl ever. He's always up front about the fact that they will have a fling at the most, a night at the least (he goes with the latter much more than the former), and that's it. His mom still doesn't like it, but she accepts it because he's never proved to not be telling the truth on either matter as they've never had a girl come to their door with a surprise or wanting money to prevent a surprise or in tears claiming she thought she had something more with her son.

It's never easy for Puck to forget about these conversations on the days his mom chooses to bring up these issues. He knows that the way he is with girls is one way she's disappointed in him. She accepts it and doesn't give him much trouble about it, but the discontent is still written all over her face (just like it is about so many other things). As much as he hates that it makes her feel like that about him, he's never made any effort to change it. See, there's logic to the type of interaction he always has with girls, it's not just him being a hormonally driven teenaged guy (well, maybe just a little). He's never becoming his dad; he's been dead set in that decision since the second the man walked out. He is definitely leaving Lima someday though, because he can't stay here and become a Lima loser, and possibly not sticking in one place after that. One way to make sure all the times he's leaving somewhere he's not leaving someone and being his dad, is to never have someone to leave in the first place. It's going to be hard enough to go somewhere else and not feel like his dad, no matter what the circumstances, thanks to his sister and his mom alone- he's not adding to that list of people he'd be leaving, no way, no how. So he has casual relationships where he doesn't get to know the girl and they don't get to know him, he's not getting attached so he feels like he's abandoning someone else and he's not letting them get hurt by him leaving either.

(And somewhere in the back of him, he knows that these are the thoughts that make him certain that at some point this week things need to end with Quinn. He knows Finn should factor into his decision. Finn is his best friend and he'd never want to screw the guy over. But- and he's known this longer than he's willing to admit- what he has going on with Quinn is a lot bigger than his friendship with Finn. Quinn meets his mom's qualifications for the type of girl he should want to find, should want a relationship with- she probably knows more things about him that matter than anyone else and she does get him. And he's not admitting to…feeling anything because that's a word he's still not ready for, but it's not impossible to imagine a relationship with her. The thing is, even if he miraculously keeps wanting that- the chances of which he thinks are slim- and even if it works and lasts, it can't last past high school. Because she's leaving and if she doesn't then he'll feel like crap for making her stay and somehow, defying logic, he always ends up being like his dad in any ensuing scenario he can possibly think of. And he's not becoming his dad, so why start down a road that seems destined to head that way?)

-o-o-o-

Quinn drives home with a smile on her face. It isn't until she's in her house that she realizes she drove home and she wasn't usually home this early, her cover required a later hour.

Luckily (or not actually) her dad has something he wants to talk to her about, so focused on it that he doesn't notice that she's home over an hour earlier than she's supposed to be. "Quinn," he begins authoritatively standing across the kitchen island from her, "I think you should drop your Wednesday night tutoring."

Quinn is completely perplexed. How were Wednesday nights relevant? Was there something else they wanted her to do now like take up a sewing class to make her seem more wholesome and it could only be done on Wednesdays?

"I don't like you being around that boy," her dad continues.

_That boy?_ Quinn wonders. Had she made up someone as a client and forgotten?

"He's…" her father begins with distaste and it's then that it hits her. Puck drove her home last Wednesday and she told her parents she was tutoring him. But how did they figure out who he was, she's sure she didn't give them a name.

"Jewish?" Quinn finishes for her father because she knows that's all she told him and she hopes that his prejudice is his only reason for starting this conversation.

"No," he father waves off, continuing to think of where he was going. On second thought he relents, "Well yes, but I saw that truck at the gas station today and I saw the boy in it. He's that Puckerman kid, the running back. And despite the fact that he is a very good running back and possibly the best player that joke of a team has right now, he's trouble. I've heard all about his reputation and there's no point to you wasting your time tutoring him sweetheart, he won't need anything you can teach him when he inevitably ends up in prison."

Quinn knows she should be used to this from either of her parents (and if her dad's talking to her, her mom will soon seek her out thinking it unfair that he talked to her and she didn't- not out of actual concern), but she's horribly offended anyway. But she can't get angry at her parents because despite who they are and how they treat her (or don't), she doesn't want to lose them from her life, she doesn't want to do anything to push them (further) away. Plus, if she's being honest she used to make the same assumption about Puck, but now she knows that if he ever ends up in prison then it'd only be because he'd do anything (no matter how wrong) for his sister and his mother. She smiles and tries to placate her dad, "Daddy, prison doesn't always last forever and while he's in and out of it he'll need to be able to find a job and he'll need a high school diploma to find one. After all, our parole system requires that recent convicts work and who else will tend our bushes and mow our lawns?"

Her father smiles proudly at her and compliments, "That's a fair point Quinny." Then he launches into how they really need better prison systems- ones where they don't waste time letting inmates get an education or have a bed to sleep in.

Eventually, after her father releases her from having to listen to him drone on about how he thinks America's government is far too kind to criminals, Quinn heads to her room. Unfortunately as soon as she shuts her door her mom is knocking on it--- she wants to talk, just like she just did with her father (her parents turned parenting into a competition that they were both competing in real half-assed). Her mom makes the case that she shouldn't be spending her time tutoring anyone that couldn't be valuable to either her popularity or her future. For example, if he could provide good gossip or secrets about some of the girls she's heard he's been with, then it could be useful because she'd have something to hold over other girls' heads. Or if he was a viable option for a boyfriend he'd be useful, but her mom warns, he's the type of guy that spending time with could only damage her popularity so she should make the right choice and stop wasting time with him, start tutoring someone who benefits her.

Quinn placates her mom by promising that since Puck used to screw around with Santana, its really bothering Santana that they're spending any sort of time together. And though Puck doesn't really know anything about Santana, it's been putting the girl on edge and keeping her in her place, reminding her that she's the one with the power. Her mom's very happy about this and tells her to, "Keep up the good work."

Quinn lets her mom leave after that. Both of her parents seemed completely satisfied with her lies so they shouldn't bother her. Yet, as she finishes her homework she realizes that she could have skipped lying to them and just told them the truth about how she's going out with Finn on Friday and they wouldn't have worried about her judgment at all after that, they would have been to pleased with her. And she knew going into it that that would have been all she needed to say, but she didn't. She knows why she didn't tell them too- because then it's real. If it's real then her and Puck are over (not that they're anything now).

She had a really good day thanks to Puck. He's the first person to know very much about her and he still wants her and that's big for her. She's been resolved to not letting people in, but he's already in and it feels good that he is. So she knows that at some point between now and Friday night she wants him to tell her that he doesn't want her to go out with Finn. She's not looking for any kind of declaration or to put a definition on what they are because she's not sure she could do either of those herself, she just wants him to admit that he doesn't want her to go out with his best friend just like she doesn't want to. But at the same time she knows she's not telling him that. She's not admitting to him that she doesn't want to go out with Finn because she'd rather be with him. She let him in, past her many protective walls, and it feels good right now but she's smart enough to know that it won't if she tells him the truth and he doesn't feel the same way.

So Quinn thinks she knows how all of this will end (and any of the ways it's not worth the risk to tell her parents any bit of truth about the situation, even that she has a date with Finn or that Puck isn't the person they assume he is). Way one: By Friday night Puck will tell her not to go out with Finn and she'll tell him that she didn't want to and cancel the date and her and Puck will keep this hidden until they know where it's going- which she's okay with not finding out for a while. Way two: He won't say anything about her not dating Finn and she won't say that she doesn't want to and this thing will stop between her and Puck because she'll go out with Finn and eventually she'll learn to like Finn. (She knows life is never that black and white, but she doesn't let herself consider all of the shades of gray here.)

-o-o-o-

Just before the bell rings for brunch on Wednesday, Quinn gets a text that tells her: _Meet me._ It should concern her that she doesn't need to ask where already or that she doesn't consider not going. Most of all it should also concern her that despite spending all of bunch together, they don't say a single word to each other.

The three classes in between brunch and lunch provide Quinn with plenty of time not only to realize that despite seeing him, she and Puck haven't said anything to each other today, and it provided her with plenty of time to worry about it. She gets another text from him suggesting meeting back at "their" closet for lunch and she wants to figure out something to say to him when she sees him, but what is she supposed to say? They're not in a relationship and they're not really friends either. So, when she gets there, she ends up blurting out the first thing that comes to her mind, "I can't skip lunch today."

"Oh, I know," Puck agrees, picking up on a direction that she didn't know was even there given that she hadn't given the statement a second of forethought. He continues, "I was starving after skipping lunch yesterday. I had to walk out of my last class and get something to eat. So I came prepared today. I swiped some food from the cafeteria kitchen, got you some too."

For a second she was hung up on the idea that he walked out of a class. How does he get away with stuff like that? But then he said that he got her food too and she forgets everything else. She doesn't actually eat cafeteria food. Everyday at lunch each Cheerio has food delivered meeting special dietary needs as stipulated by Coach Sylvester. It's such a nice gesture though, one she doesn't expect from him, that she simply says, "Thanks."

He smiles despite himself. He didn't mean for it to really mean anything, he just wanted to eat and he figured if he didn't get her something to eat too then she had no reason to stick around with him any longer. And he wanted her around.

Twenty minutes later while they're finally eating lunch, Puck tries to mention casually, "Uh, I have to pick up Kel from that reading group thing tonight. My mom will still be in her first therapy session then. And she mentioned doing stuff at home before that." He swallows thickly and starts to stumble through, "I mean, I have some free time today, but I don't know anywhere we could…".

"Hmm," she contemplates. She has a few ideas already, but he was clearly not used to making plans and it was pretty cute to see him fumbling so she figured she'd stretch it out. She offers, "Well my house is definitely out of the question."

"You sure?" he checks, "I'm really useful at pissing off parents. They always have a problem with me."

"I'm not looking to piss off my parents," she informs him and moves on quickly adding, "I'm not looking to even see them if possible."

If her parents were like she'd been describing he didn't see why she wouldn't want to piss them off, that'd certainly be his course of action in her situation. Asking her about that wouldn't get them anywhere though and it didn't seem like she wanted to talk about it anyway so he let it go. "My truck? We could just park somewhere out of the way," he suggests.

"For a while maybe that would work, but it'd also get pretty cramped," she reasons. She offers the idea that had immediately come to her, "We could go to Foster's. It's almost always empty. Foster and Addie aren't even always in there." She adds to her case, "Plus they already think there's something…going on with us. They've said stuff like that to you too, right?" She worries she said too much. Lately, she's been having trouble thinking things through with him, it's getting annoying.

"Yeah," he confirms, "what's up with that?"

She shrugs and supposes, "They don't have a lot of customers? They're bored? I don't know but it'd be pretty convenient now."

He's not crazy about the idea of going to Foster's and showing Foster he was right about him. He doesn't like the idea of Quinn not spending the day with him because they don't have anywhere to go even less though so he agrees, "Yeah, I guess it'll work for a while."

That afternoon Quinn meets Puck a little ways away from the house he dropped Kelyn off at (he volunteered to drop her for his mom since it turned out he was heading that way). She parks her car behind his truck and joins him in his backseat and they stay there for a while.

When the truck starts feeling cramped they head to Foster's. Foster doesn't say anything when they sit on the same side of the booth (Puck swears he only did it not out of any boy-friend like obligation, but just to keep touching her). They play poker against Addie and Foster (suggested by the older couple and Quinn insisted they couldn't turn them down) and Quinn keeps sliding her leg up against his while they play and he thinks he could get used to this. Yeah, he thought that it was doomed, but if she said she didn't want to go out with Finn, he knows he'd be happy and he'd stay with her as long as she let him even if it meant risking turning into his dad.

By the time they eat Foster and Addie have left them alone, seemingly on purpose, to give what they assume is a new couple some privacy. Quinn's not so sure they need it. Since they got here Puck has sat really close to her, put his hand on her leg (and moved it up so high she started blushing), but done nothing else. She supposes he's not into PDA and figures maybe they shouldn't go anywhere public tomorrow. Then, catching her totally off guard, he kisses her after dinner, just once and pretends to think as she considers, "Hm, I think my dinner was definitely better than yours. But I'm going to have to get more evidence." He leans in again and she meets him halfway, smiling.

When they leave they park near her car again and spend time on his front seat until he has to go pick up Kelyn. When she leaves, she's smiling and hoping that tomorrow will be just as good as today.

-o-o-o-

They both know what Thursday could be. It's either a beginning or an end. (And Quinn should have realized that that simple fact would mean it was impossible to be as good as the previous day.)

At school, Santana makes a comment to her in first period about how she's been smiling all week (clearly Santana suspects there's something important she's purposely not being let in on). She lies and tells her it's because she has a date with Finn. (She knows that's not the reason at all. And she thinks maybe, this is the first time she hasn't had to pretend to be happy.)

Thursday passes much like Wednesday. They spend time together during both brunch and lunch in "their" closet. There's actual conversation at lunch since it's quickly resolved that since his apartment is unavailable they'd just repeat yesterday's routine. They don't repeat the routine exactly though as they spend far less time at Foster's and far more time in his truck.

Eventually, the night has to come to an end. They both need to head home and they both know it. Quinn briefly entertains the idea of suggesting that they just take off from here, but she knows he can't leave and if there's any chance of her getting the future she imagined (which, oddly, she hasn't been thinking of at all lately) she shouldn't leave.

She's in his lap, straddled across him, with a few more of the buttons on his button down shirt undone than she'd like to admit to doing. The hour is approaching ten and she knows that she can't wait for him to ask her not to go through with her plans for tomorrow anymore, he's clearly not going to do that. But she doesn't want this to be the end. She pulls away from him and simply sits there, staring at him for a minute. She's more daring than she expected (and more stupid) because she begins, "I…". The rest of the words die on her tongue as he stares at her expectantly. She can't do it. She can't put herself out there like that. She's not ready to risk that much. She bites her lip, thinks for a second, then smiles a little as she changes direction, "This has been so great." She lets a few beats pass and he's still not saying anything so she knows she has to accept what this was (what it isn't), and she forces herself to continue the course she knows it needs to take. She hopes she doesn't sound as disappointed as she feels as she adds, "Tomorrow's Friday and…".

"You're going out with Finn," he finishes for her. Here he'd been waiting for her to say that she couldn't, but she was sitting in his lap and not denying that he was right. Given everything he thought could come of this, and the fact that he probably couldn't handle a real relationship anyway, this was probably for the best he tells himself. (Even if he's already started to feel like shit despite the fact that he hasn't even had to see them together yet.) Since she's had a minute and she's not denying he's right, he makes this continue on the path it needs to be on by forging on, "Finn can't find out about this."

She smiles trying to ignore the sadness of this for the moment and concentrate on the moment alone. She offers, "I don't think that will be a problem since we've been _sneaking around_."

He gets caught up just looking at her then, sitting in his lap and smiling at him. He reaches up and strokes her hair, tucks a bit behind her ear to keep it from hiding her face. It feels like a sorry-assed-sap move even as he's doing it, but knowing that doesn't make him want to any less. And then she's kissing him again and they forget about the fact that it's over for a few more minutes until his phone rings with his mom calling wondering where he is. And then they part ways, acting like it's just a normal night and nothing is happening of significance because that's the way it needs to be (especially since neither is willing to admit that it's not what they want).

-o-o-o-

The closest thing to the truth Quinn's willing to admit to herself is that she was infatuated with him (past tense, that was important). So it doesn't make sense that once she's in alone in her room twenty minutes after she leaves him she's jiggling her leg and has her eyes turned toward the sky and she's praying to God not to cry. She can't cry, not over him. She's determined enough that not a single tear escapes, even though they sting in her eyes for hours.

The next day things get a little worse. Finn keeps walking with her to her classes and talking about what they should do that night. It's sweet and she feels guilty that she doesn't really care. She feels even worse when they go out that night and he lets her pick the movie and the restaurant afterwards and plays elbow-tag with her for the first hour of the movie before he finally takes her hand in his. And in the end he doesn't try to grope her or make out with her, just kisses her cheek while blushing. This is exactly what she should want (even if he's not much for conversation), and she's lucky she has it, so she resolves that she will make herself be satisfied with this (she'd say happy, but that's always seemed like an impossibility here).

-o-o-o-

Puck doesn't see them together on Friday before their date. He kind of ditched most of that day of school, though he swears it's just because he's been showing up far more than he's comfortable with lately and doesn't have anything to do with her.

He gets a text late Friday from Finn saying the date went well. He's at a party, and that's the point he decides to have a few more beers, even if it'll mean he has to walk home.

On Monday at school the first thing he sees is them walking down the halls together, hand in hand and smiling. He briefly thinks that something doesn't look quite right about her smile, but then again he can't look at them long enough to confirm that.

He hooks up with Santana again later that day, because after seeing them together in between every class he feels like crap. And he really doesn't want to anymore.

-o-o-o-

They have to be around each other more than either expected. So Quinn has to see him with whatever girl has decided she wants to fool around with him and Puck has to see her act like the "perfect couple" with his best friend. It's one of the more challenging things either of them has done, to act like none of it matters. But they're both so skilled that it doesn't even show, not even to each other.

Eventually, the do find themselves stuck together alone, if only briefly. It's the last week of school, only five weeks after Quinn starts dating Finn. It's way too soon for this, but it's happening nonetheless.

It starts at an orchard party. She's by Finn's side and he pulls her along, dragging her over to where Puck's sitting on the bed of his truck because he needs to talk to Puck about something important.

"Hey man," Finn greets, "I keep forgetting to ask you something."

"Okay," Puck responds tightly and takes another drink of his beer, because she's about three feet away from him and the only reason she is, is because she's with his best friend. He knows none of it is Finn's fault, but he keeps getting angrier and angrier at the guy anyway.

"You know how my mom's birthday is coming up? I really wanted to play her a Neil Diamond song, since she loves him, and since you know how to play him I thought maybe you'd be willing to show me and play along for her too," Finn rambles on in suggestion.

Quinn had been trying not to listen, trying to act disinterested not so much in the exchange, but in the boy who was sitting on his truck bed. But when she hears the name of the familiar artist and the information attached to it she can't help her eyes turning to him and lighting up with recognition.

"Sure," Puck agrees tightly. He doesn't much care what she may know now, it's not like they ever talk anymore anyway. Which is probably for the best, he reminds himself.

"Great," Finn declares enthusiastically and completely oblivious to his friend's suddenly grumpy demeanor or his girlfriend's sudden interest in the conversation. His phone starts ringing further distracting him from what's actually right there in front of him. He pulls it out of his pocket and notices the name on the screen. "Whoops," he begins, "I kind of forgot to tell my mom I was going out tonight. I've gotta take this." He adds to Quinn, "Be right back." He walks away from the party, from the noise of the other people to talk to his mom.

She could leave even though Finn's words implied that he expected to find her in this spot in a few seconds and she knows it. Despite the fact that she knows it's another bad idea of hers, she questions, "You know Neil Diamond? But you told Addie-"

"I don't like Neil Diamond," Puck cuts her off angrily, "So I'm not going to play that douche for just anyone."

He doesn't know when it happened, but he can read her better than he can read anyone else. Maybe to everyone else her face would still look like a blank mask right now. But he sees it. The slightest movement of her lower lip, moved just a millimeter before catching itself from its action of dropping. The smallest movement at the base of her neck, like she took in the slightest breath. And it tells him that he was unnecessarily harsh and he hurt her. And his mind says that he shouldn't care because he feels like crap so often lately he's not sure he remembers what it feels like not to anymore. But he does care so he adds on softer, "I have a rep to protect, you know? Can't just go around looking like an idiot for anyone." He smirks a little, and the corners of her mouth move upward slightly and her eyes seem a little warmer as they're looking at him so he goes with it. He questions, hoping it just sounds conversational, "So how'd you do on those tests you were all anal about? Those AP ones?"

She actually smiles then. Quinn knows she probably only mentioned them a handful of times at the most so it makes her feel good that he remembered. "I don't get to find out yet," she answers, "but I'm pretty sure I did flawlessly. How could I not?"

Puck coughs "geek" and laughs a little at his own joke (she does too). It makes it a little more comfortable.

Since it feels a little more like it was, Quinn decides to ask a question that she'd been wondering about all these weeks where they haven't really talked. She glances in the direction she thought Finn was in with her peripheral vision, just to make sure he's still there (which he is) and she asks, "How's Kelyn?"

"Good," he answers and tries not to dwell on the fact that her asking about his sister made something feel really good inside him. He elaborates, "She started dance classes, through the rec center, this week."

They'd been avoiding more than a second of direct eye contact since Finn left despite the fact that they were talking. She'd look to his forehead or his nose as she spoke and he'd look at her hair and (tortuously) her mouth. But then, after he let her know that he took her one-time offered advice about his sister his eyes locked on hers and neither could make the effort to look away.

They'd never had a relapse. Even when they passed each other in the hall in front of "their" closet, there wasn't a stolen kiss or touch or glance. They were too stubborn to let themselves slip back into the thing they were, that they had both individually decided was a bad idea.

Here. Now. Eyes locked and every feeling flooding back, they both wondered what would happen if they met up in the orchard somewhere alone. Their bull-headed-ness would certainly falter, that's for sure.

But Finn comes back and drags Quinn away and everything that was there doesn't disappear (it never did), but it gets shoved away by both of them again.

-o-o-o-

A month into summer Puck is pretty sure he's got his life back to normal. Well, he has a pool cleaning business, which he has thanks to Foster (and he knows Foster thanks to Quinn, but he's ignoring that), and working isn't really typical for him, but he does like money so he figures it was an inevitable change.

Other than his new pool cleaning business though, his life has returned to exactly what it's always been. He has football practice in the mornings where he frequently gets mad at his idiot teammates and takes those frustrations out by taking every opportunity to pummel them (even though coach told him to stop tackling- it resulted in some injuries). He's been taking every opportunity to humiliate the freaks and geeks he finds around town through pranks and various harassments- usually accompanied by some of his more fun teammates. And he's kept a steady stream of various girls (and some women) in and then quickly out of his life (bed).

All in all, everything seems to be completely normal and exactly the way he wants it.

(Except whenever he's not keeping up with things that are "normal"- and even sometimes when he is- he has these moments where he still feels like crap. He hasn't even seen them together much over the summer. Quinn had Finn doing some nutty Christian stuff he didn't understand. Despite not really seeing her and having his life back, he still finds her on his mind, still finds himself wishing things were different.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn had continued to go to Foster's throughout those last five weeks of school. She dreaded every second she spent there, but she couldn't let herself stop going, she knew what that could mean. Thankfully, neither Addie or Foster comment on how she's there alone again. Instead, Addie brings her baked goods everyday now. And when school comes to an end and she doesn't have her tutoring cover to keep her out of the house anyway, she warns Foster and Addie that she won't be able to be by as much as she has been. By how tightly Addie hugged her she's pretty sure Addie knew that it was more of a "goodbye" than a "see you later." She feels bad for not going back, for cutting them out of her life when they'd been so good to her. (But after being there with Puck…she was miserable and for all her determination and pretending, she just couldn't put up with it anymore.)

As usual, the first two weeks of Quinn's summer are spent at cheer camp. It's actually quite a vicious environment, but since she had long since mastered it and risen to the top of it, it really didn't serve as the distraction she was hoping for. Though part of the lack of distraction is that Finn sends her texts every day, reminding her of things she doesn't want to think about.

She likes Finn, she does. He's sweet and nice and he trusts her (even though she doesn't trust him and even though she doesn't deserve it). She thinks that if things had been different she would have dated Finn, found a really good friend in him, and been content with him for the rest of high school. But the way things are, with her having a…something with his best friend right before she went out with him, it makes her feel like the problems are stacked against her and Finn and it's all her fault that they are. (The part of her that denies that Puck meant anything also denies that she's happy things seem off with Finn.)

When she gets back she tries to help Finn get more involved in her life. She's not letting him in, he's a high school boyfriend and he won't be more so there's no need for that (even though his complete honesty makes her feel guilty for not being the same way with him). But she does decide to let him in to her religious life, especially since he'd been getting a tad more aggressive when they'd make out- she figures he could use a reminder of what's proper. He goes along with it so willingly it surprises her. He really would do anything for her. She knows most girls would be happy to have a boyfriend willing to do anything for them, but she can't help but think that he's only going to end up getting hurt if he remains that nice.

So she has cheer practice everyday and she has Bible study with Finn joining her group one night a week and her Christ Crusaders, also joined by Finn, one night a week. Then she usually makes time for one other date night with Finn a week, but she keeps her interactions with him relatively sparse, explaining their frequent separation to Finn by telling him she wants him to hang out with his friends and have his own life. She thought he'd be clingy so she's pleasantly surprised when he likes that and easily goes along with it.

She doesn't spend more than one night a week at home still. Not being able to go back to Foster's left Quinn with a lot of time to fill. While reading the paper one day she stumbled on an advertisement and it sparked an idea. She told her parents she would be volunteering at various organizations around town, but actually she signed up for a ballet class in Findlay. It's about forty minutes up the I-75 and there are closer dance classes, but she picks it to make sure she won't run into anyone she knows.

So three nights a week for eight of the ten remaining of summer, Quinn gets to explore one of the many things her parent's idea for her life denied her. She has a fantastic time in her class. It's easily the best part of her summer. She's not the best dancer there (close), but for once she's not competing with everyone around her. She's simply participating and enjoying and learning. Towards the end of it she resolves that the childhood dream her mother squashed of being a ballet dancer wasn't so bad because dancing wasn't a life for her. She enjoyed the class and she hoped she'd get to take more classes, maybe while she's in college. But eventually she realizes that dancers are performers and she's already had enough performing to last a lifetime, she doesn't want a career that requires it.

What she finds nearly as enjoyable as the dance class itself is that it's in Findlay. Not that Findlay is any particularly great town- she's so not even applying to their university- but it's not home and she doesn't know anyone there. So she often finds herself hanging out in town before and/or after her class. She'll run errands, she'll read in Riverside Park, she'll browse any store, just to spend time in a place where no one knows her or expects anything of her.

On one day while she's at Findlay's Wal-Mart, which she wandered into to browse DVD's that her parents deemed unacceptable, she's shocked to hear her name called. She comes to a stop instead of continuing on to her destination and looks around. It's not until she looks down and other shoppers part that she sees Kelyn running towards her happily.

"Kelyn!" she exclaims just before the young girl practically pummels her in a hug. She hugs back tightly but she can't help being concerned at the situation and quickly proceeds in questioning, "What are you doing here? You're not alone right? Who did you get away from?"

Kelyn doesn't get a chance to answer before her brother's angry (and out of breath) voice calls, "Yo, whippersnapper."

Kelyn goes on the defense, "I told you where I was going and I didn't leave the store so I didn't run away."

"If I had to run after you, then you ran away," Puck says finally catching up to them and hunching over to catch his breath. "What did I tell you about that?" Puck questions, reminding.

Kelyn rolls her eyes and recites, "Don't make you run on days where you had to go to football practice."

"That's right," he affirms.

"Even though your team is horrible and your coach clearly must not actually make you do much at practice," Kelyn adds on smartly.

Quinn can't help but laugh then. She had been worried the second she saw Kelyn, but the bad feeling she thought would be associated with seeing him just wasn't there. (But all the good ones of before were certainly back.)

Rather than countering his sister, Puck reminds Quinn, "What are you laughing at? You're always out there making an idiot out yourself cheerin' for our crap team."

"We don't cheer for you. Your team isn't worth cheering for. We cheer for ourselves. We're the only ones doing anything impressive out there," Quinn explains. Or at least that was the way Coach Sylvester had always put it- who didn't believe in cheering for the sports they were required to since they were the only team with talent on campus.

" 'Cause waving pom-poms takes so much talent," Puck returns sarcastically.

Quinn has a retort on her tongue, but Kelyn loudly clears her throat and catches both teens' attention. She was quite bored with the direction the conversation had taken. "I want to go look at the fish," Kelyn pleads.

"You're not getting a fish just so I have to flush it by next week," Puck tells her. Kelyn pouts and it doesn't even take a full minute before Puck caves saying, "But I guess you can go look."

"Yay!" she exclaims. She grabs Quinn's hand and begins to drag her along towards the fish saying, "Come on Quinn, let's go see the fish."

"Kel," Puck begins, chasing after them, "you can't just order someone to come with you. Quinn may be in a hurry. You don't know-"

"I don't have any plans," Quinn interrupts glancing back at him from being dragged by Kelyn.

"See," Kelyn says, as if declaring that she was right.

Kelyn points out all the fish she likes, occasionally donning them names in the process. Quinn plays along as she listens to the girl while Puck is forced to frequently repeat that they were not getting a fish.

Eventually, as Kelyn is directing a store assistant with a net to the exact fish she wants in a tank of more than twenty, Puck stands with Quinn at the end of the aisle watching. He feels like he should thank her for staying and going along with his sister, but she did it of her own free will and besides, thanking her reminded him of a lot of things that were best left in the past.

They'd been watching the store associate try to get the fish Kelyn wanted for five silent minutes before Quinn finally decides to ask the question on her mind, "So what are you guys doing in Findlay?"

"Kel's daycare closed today- the lady who runs it had a family emergency- so she was stuck coming to work with me today," Puck answers simply. Before Quinn can ask, he realizes he left out a pretty important piece of information, "I started a pool cleaning business. I have a couple of clients here."

"Oh," she responds simply. She'd say more or ask more, but that's what she would have normally done and she had to be more careful than normal with him now.

"What are you doing here?" he returns.

She surprises herself when she doesn't consider lying. She answers honestly, "I'm taking a dance class here. Ballet. It had to be out of town because, you know, my parents. And then after I usually find myself hanging around town somewhere." (She smiles a little, because he's the first person she's told that to and that doesn't feel at all wrong like she knows it should.)

He makes sure he's looking the other way, so she can't see him as he knows he's smiling a little at the image of her in one of those ballet costume things. (Later, he'll be smiling a lot more and feeling a lot better because he'll ask Finn what keeps Quinn from going out with him every night and he'll learn that Finn doesn't have any idea what the truth is. But he does. Because Quinn was honest with him.)

"And _Wal-Mart_ is where you chose to hang out today?" Puck mocks.

She shrugs and answers simply, not giving in to his clear antagonizing, "The DVD's are cheap."

Kelyn comes racing down the aisle toward them then, plastic bag with fish in it in hand.

After Kelyn tells them the name she's chosen for the fish and explained why she chose it, Puck tells her, "Come on Kel, we've got to get home. Mom will beat us there if we don't hurry."

Kelyn sighs dramatically, but doesn't argue. She wraps her arms around Quinn again as she says, "Goodbye Quinn. I miss you."

"I miss you too," Quinn returns and she forces her eyes to keep focused on the ground behind the girl hugging her as she says it because she can't deny that right now she feels the urge to look to him.

They leave, Puck offering a small wave and a "See ya," that she can barely return. She doesn't understand what's happening to her. This isn't how she wanted things to be. This isn't what she wanted.

She heads to the DVD's and tries to browse for a while and take her mind off the things she knows she shouldn't want, but has wanted for a while all the same.

(The DVD browsing doesn't work and she'll head to the aisle with the body washes before she leaves. Before she can head out of any store like this, she always finds herself in this product aisle. Closing her eyes ever so briefly as she's in it, she takes in the overwhelming sent of Axe body wash and remembers what it was like to be with the boy who always faintly smelled like it and who was just in this store with her, but who still felt so far away thanks to their circumstances.)

-o-o-o-

Early August soon comes and school starts again. By the end of August everyone's fallen into a school-routine as usual.

Puck dumps someone in the dumpster every morning- still usually that gay kid who's name he honestly doesn't know. He randomly semi-assaults people in the halls, whoever looks like an easy target because he's not much for challenges these days. Sometimes there's a girl to mess around with at some point during the day, or at least many to flirt with. And after he goes to football practice he usually ends his day with a more thoughtful or fun attack- like going egging.

By the time school had started Quinn resolved that she needed to give her and Finn a better chance by being more committed, which meant being a better girlfriend. Though the things she's willing to do to be a better girlfriend are quite limited since she refuses to really let him past first base and she's not willing to open up about herself so they can actually begin to get to know each other (and she still regularly thinks about all of her time with his best friend). What she does make an effort to do is spend more time with him, be generally encouraging and supportive, and she tires to tutor him without him catching on (she didn't want to hurt his ego) because, damn, could he use it.

So Quinn spends considerably more of her time with Finn, which honestly isn't at all bad. It's certainly better than hanging out with her fellow Cheerio's and it's been giving everyone the impression that they're so in love they hate to spend time away from each other. It's a nice idea, so she never corrects anyone.

Other than spending time with Finn though, Quinn has her honors and AP classes, cheer practice in the mornings, all of her religious clubs to run, and Coach Sylvester decided to start "surprise practices" where they'd get a note and have five minutes to make it to a location where they'd have to perform their newest routine flawlessly before being able to return to class. This is something Quinn hates and is eventually forced to talk Coach Sylvester out of since, unlike her fellow Cheerio's, she's not suffering from multiple learning disabilities and actually wants to learn from her classes and do well in them. It takes her until the beginning of September, but she finally talks Coach Sylvester into doing three after school practices a week instead of the random ones that didn't really serve to make them any better. So, it appears her life is finally turning completely manageable again, with every little aspect completely in her control just the way she likes it.

That doesn't even last a week before she hears what she assumes is a rumor about Finn joining the glee club. (And since when do they have a glee club?) She doesn't get the chance to talk to Finn about it before Coach Sylvester has called her into her office and is complaining that her boyfriend is helping that ridiculous glee club- that very well could steal their funds and thunder- actually get a start at their school. She knows better than to argue with Coach Sylvester when she's not sure she's right, so she doesn't deny it. Instead, she agrees to go spy on them when Coach knows they have the auditorium reserved. She doesn't know how Santana managed to tag along, but she's there to see it too---Finn, her boyfriend, singing with that band of misfits. (She's never seen him look that happy. And when she sees him look at Rachel while they're singing, she knows she's never seen him look like that either, not for her.)

Quinn spends the weekend considering what to do. She doesn't know why he's doing this to himself. She gets that Finn just kind of fell into popularity, but how could he not know that he can't do whatever he wants and expect to keep it? She could fix that confusion she supposes, helping him out is definitely something a good girlfriend would do.

(Or she could break up with him. But what would that really do? Together they were the most popular couple in their school and if they broke up she'd lose that. If she broke up with him her parents would be angry and disappointed. If she broke up with him over this he probably wouldn't be her friend anymore, and she likes him, she doesn't want to lose him completely.

But if she broke up with him…it made certain things from the past possible. Only, her past didn't necessarily look like an option. He'd been with a lot of girls in the past few months, from what she had heard.

Which makes it seem like she only has one option here.)

Monday she starts laying in to Finn about how he's ruining his future, their future, with this sudden need to sing and dance. He doesn't believe her because he's too naïve. But the whole time that Rachel girl was listening in. She's been harsh to Rachel throughout their time in school together. The girl set herself up for it by frequently singing about being lonely or not having someone return her feelings. Really? This is high school, and like Finn, she should know better.

She's a bit worse to Rachel now though. She's not sure what it is really, but it gets to her that Finn clearly has some kind of …thing with Rachel and Rachel certainly has a big thing for him. It's not jealousy- that she's sure of. Maybe it was just because she didn't want him to not want her. It never feels good to not be wanted, she's learned that from her parents. And it's becoming increasingly clear that there's a possibility that Finn will come to not want her.

(When she looks back on it she knows that this should have been the moment she dropped it. She should have let him have whatever he was going to have with Rachel. She should have confronted him about not really wanting her and been honest about not really wanting him. Instead, she keeps fighting for him.)

Quinn thinks it's pathetic when Rachel joins her abstinence group clearly just because Finn was in it. But then Rachel challenges her. Flat-out and in front of everyone. Honestly, it had been a long time since she's had anyone try to face off against her like that and it throws her far more than she'd like. She responds heatedly and screechy and she doesn't care what Finn thinks sparked that response, she figures he'll just think it's out of jealousy and feel good about their relationship. But Puck showed up to this meeting (she hates that Finn begged him to join too) and he knows her better than everyone else in the room and he may actually be able to figure out why she actually lost control for that brief minute. The idea of him figuring it out terrifies her, because she has no idea what really provoked it, where it came from, and if he knows her well enough to figure it out it proves a lot of things true that she's been so successfully denying for a while now.

Once she watches Finn perform with Rachel, she knows what everyone else is going to assume about them and what everyone is going to think she needs to do. She needs to fight for him, harder. So she joins glee club and ropes in Santana and Brittney. She actually has fun doing the number they put together for Mr. Schue, and Mr. Schue is so welcoming and encouraging that it doesn't seem like the worst idea ever. Plus then Coach Sylvester seems to like her more for putting herself in the perfect position to spy so this whole being a supportive girlfriend thing looks like a win from every direction.

To top it off, it seems to work. Or at least something changes because Finn has returned to being the doting-if-not-dopey boyfriend that makes her the envy of most of the female student body. All seems to be good.

-o-o-o-

All remains good for the next few weeks. Quinn does as she's asked and performs well in glee. She also does as she's asked and performs her spying and ruining of glee well. Things are good with Finn and she finds that some of the glee members aren't the people she assumed and it's a nice surprise. She's also finding Santana and Brittney to be more enjoyable to be around than she ever has before, which is also nice.

She doesn't really care if Coach Sylvester's plan works. She figures it will because who would actually win against Coach Sylvester? But this club demoting one's popularity shouldn't be a problem now that she's in it (which sounds cocky, but is kind of true) plus if she has to stay in it she's not going to be a part of a team that looses so she figures whoever wins the battle, the glee club or Coach Sylvester, she's still going to come out winning, which makes everything in the process okay.

It's a couple of weeks after Mr. Schue started blowing off some of the glee rehearsals because he started his Acafella's group that things change. It's a Friday morning and Coach Sylvester cancelled morning practice because she had some interview or something. So, unlike most mornings, Quinn actually sees her parents before she leaves for school.

As she eats a small healthy breakfast of low-fat yogurt and fruit, Quinn's mother is commenting on things in the newspaper. Tomorrow there's a cocktail/dinner thing she's required to go to at their country club. She can't remember what it's for but after her mother mentions the lack of advertisement for it in the paper, the next thing she comments on is an engagement picture of the daughter of someone else who's prominent at their country club. Her mother mocks it, describing to Quinn how horribly unattractive the couple in the picture look before thrusting the paper before Quinn to show her. The homely couple doesn't catch her eye though. Instead of the engagement announcements, it's an obituary on the opposite page that grabs her attention. It's a familiar name and it leaves her tearing up out of shock before she realizes where she is and that she can't be caught doing this here. So she gathers herself, races to her room to grab her things, and heads to buy a paper before school. She reads the details of the family, of his life, and of the service- which is Monday during school and she won't be able to make it.

All she can think about all day is what she read in the paper. Her scheming and pretending is so half-hearted she's surprised when no one seems to notice.

She wants to ask Puck about what she read in the paper, see if he'd seen it. Even though they didn't talk now she didn't care, she wanted to talk to him and she would have if she had found him, but somehow she couldn't manage to catch up with him all day.

She goes home at the end of the day and she figures that there's something she needs to do. She needs a bit of closure and she owes someone her condolences. So she changes into a simple, plain black dress because somehow wearing any other color seems completely inappropriate for the encounter she's planning. Except once she's headed to her destination she finds that it's grown cooler out and her sleeveless dress isn't nearly warm enough. The only sweater she has in her car is white and it ruins the appropriateness she was going for, but she doesn't really have a choice anymore.

When she gets to the dusty parking lot, the new wind stirring up dirt from the fields and clinging to the once pure white sweater on her shoulders, she's surprised to find hers isn't the only car there and that she recognizes the other one.

She gets out of her car quickly and ask as Puck's getting out of his truck, "Did you read the paper too?"

"What?" he's responding just as the entrance door swings open and Addie walks out.

Addie stops, surprised to see the pair before her there again. But then again, people are always showing up in times like these. She questions knowingly, "Saw the paper?"

While Puck is confused, Quinn nods solemnly and responds, "I'm so sorry."

Addie tries for a small smile but it quickly fades as tears fill her eyes and a sharp sob escapes her mouth. She's lost control around just about everyone so far, but given the circumstances she's not surprised.

While Puck is a mixture of surprised, worried, and completely uncomfortable, Quinn gathers her strength not to cry in this moment too as she rushes to the older woman and hugs her, consoles her.

Puck doesn't know what to do, mostly because he has no idea what kind of situation he's in here. He knows he'll sound like an idiot and it will probably be the wrong thing to ask right now, but he questions, "Uh, what was in the paper?"

Quinn doesn't know how to tactfully respond to that at the moment, but as she's thinking about it Addie speaks up, having calmed down. She says bluntly, "Foster's obituary. He passed on Wednesday. It was a heart attack."

"Oh," Puck says, everything making sense now. He adds sincerely, "I'm sorry."

Addie waves him off, releasing Quinn. "It's okay," she says like she's trying to convince herself that it is. "We had fifty eight years together and that was a lot more than most people. And in his seventy-two years of life he lived the hell out of it." She chuckles a little nostalgically, wipes at her eyes again.

Quinn bites her lip, unsure of what to say. She's never had someone in her life die, all four grandparents having died before she was born. She's especially never been in Addie's situation. She supposes she might as well say what else she came to. She offers, "I can't come on Monday since I have school, but I wanted to see if there's anything I could do for you? Anything you need help with?"

"Ah, that's sweet honey, but I'm good. My oldest son was here by yesterday morning. He just went back home to pick up his kids and bring them back here for the weekend. And my daughter got here yesterday too. She's out buying paper plates and stuff- we decided we don't want to be stuck with dishes after the wake," the last word seems to stick in her mouth. She pauses for a minute, glances at the bar behind her and continues, "I couldn't remember if I'd turned off the lights inside. We were in there on Wednesday night, when it happened and with all the… I had locked the door late that night and not come back." She adds thoughtfully, tears starting to form again, "I'm not sure I'll be able to be back in there much. It just doesn't feel the same anymore."

"What are you going to do now then?" Quinn questions, hoping to be able to provide suggestions as help for the older woman if she doesn't know.

She tries for a smile again, it doesn't reach her features somehow, as she answers, "Uh, well all my kids invited me to stay with them and their families and I'm going to take all of them up on that. Spend some time with all of them and all of my grandchildren. Maybe by the time I get back I'll be able to…" she shakes her head trailing off. _Live without him_, was what she meant to say, but the idea still sounds so heart-wrenching and harsh, she can't say it out loud.

Addie gives Quinn's hand a squeeze, walks her the few feet towards Puck and changes the subject. She asks both teens how they are and receives the typical teenaged-single-word response. Then amid thinking of how insufficient such answers were, she realizes, "Oh, I have a box for you Puck. I noticed it in the basement a while ago. A small box with your name written on it by Fos. I asked him about it and he just said he was going to give it to you eventually. If you can wait a minute I can go get it now; don't know when I'll be back in town anyway."

He can't argue with that and he's not going to argue with a grieving woman anyway so Puck simply agrees to wait. Since Addie didn't say goodbye to Quinn before she hopped in that trailer looking thing and sped off towards her home and since Quinn didn't get a goodbye in before she was off, Puck's not surprised when Quinn just stands there waiting with him.

After a minute of rather uncomfortable silence, he tries to begin conversationally and teasingly, "So everyone's saying you joined _glee club_."

"Yep," she confirms simply.

He laughs then because he finds the idea of anyone in glee club pretty hilarious. He didn't get why Finn joined at all. Shouldn't he know better than to make a homo move like that? Yeah he saw them perform and they were pretty good, but that doesn't excuse willingly singing and dancing on a stage. That's so…gay. "That must be fun," he says sarcastically.

"It wasn't as bad as I expected," Quinn offers. She's not going to defend the club, she doesn't like it that much yet. But it wasn't what she thought it would be (she would have laughed like Puck too) and that did deserve to be acknowledged.

He gets why she's in it. He's heard all the rumors about how she joined because that Rachel chick was going after Finn so Quinn joined to put them both in line. He so doesn't want to talk about that though. Instead he mentions, "Come on, you've got that Rachel girl in that club- I have no idea how you survive that."

She shrugs and agrees, "Yeah, that is pretty bad." She doesn't think about it before she continues, "Do you remember how horrible she was in chastity club? God, she's annoying- not to mention insane."

"Yeah she is," Puck agrees and ads on, "But despite being a nut-job she had a point there." He adds antagonizing, "Which is why she got you to flip out."

She realizes that they've gotten into that dangerous territory she was initially worried about that day (and that it's probably her fault they're here), but she's had some time to come up with reasons that ease her mind now. She proposes an idea she's okay with about how Rachel made her lose control, "Because she talked about sex in abstinence club?"

"Nope," he denies, "your problem wasn't that she was talking about sex or contraception."

"Right," she agrees sarcastically with a roll of her eyes. "So what was it?" she questions because she's not going to be caught not wanting the answer he has no matter how much she doesn't want to hear what he's come up with.

He's not quite sure when he spent so much time thinking about her, but it doesn't really surprise him that he clearly has given the ease of his answers. He explains, "You didn't have a problem with her encouraging sex because you plan to have it- your whole abstinence pledge only lasts until you're married, right?" He doesn't wait for her to confirm he's right before he continues on, "So you don't actually have a problem with sex. And you don't have a problem with contraception like she was talking about either because you like planning and you're not going to want to get pregnant with your husband whenever, you'll want control over it so you'll definitely use something to make sure everything you want happens how you want eventually. Which leaves your problem to be with what she was doing there: saying a big fuck you to what anyone thought about her or the consequences and doing what she wants."

She didn't expect him to be logical, and yet she followed his reasoning somehow. She asks challenging, "And why would I have a problem with her doing that?"

"Well not because her doing what she wanted meant making it clear to your boyfriend that she'd do him, that's for sure. And not because she was challenging your authority in a room of your people," he informs her. He takes a step closer to her and tells her, "You didn't like what she did because you'd never do something like that. You care too much about what everyone thinks and about what could happen."

"And you don't? You play into the school-bully role every chance you get," she accuses in return.

"No I do," he admits, "but at least sometimes I do what I want without giving a damn about anything else."

"Some people would call that stupidity," she argues.

He wants to tell her that some stupid people are really happy. Because that's what it was ultimately about- Rachel went after something she thought would make her happy pretty hard in that moment and not caring about anything else. And he thought she was being an idiot for going after a guy who dates Quinn Fabray, but still, if it worked, she'd probably be happier than anyone else that was in that room. And he wanted to tell her that she could do that too, that he had done that when he kissed her that first time, just didn't keep doing that and if he had…if he had, things may be different now. But he cared too much about the consequences (about turning into his dad) and since she stopped them too then she clearly did too. Only she pretended a helluva lot more and he wanted to say that too her too, that she didn't have to because he got to know her while they had been here at Foster's and there was nothing about her she ever needed to hide. And yet, he was standing here silent for about a minute now because he couldn't say any of it. If he said it, he'd be as open as Rachel was in that moment in chastity club, but Rachel got hurt in the end and considering that didn't split up the dynamic duo, he'd probably end up regretting any more honesty here. So, he changes direction, "What are you talking about any of this with me for? Shouldn't you be talking to Finn?"

It feels like a low-blow even though it shouldn't. She didn't leave him for Finn. She didn't choose Finn over him. He knew she was going to go out with Finn and he never tried to stop her so if he decided to be bitter about it now, that should be his problem not hers. Yet, it hurt and she felt bad about it. She felt bad about not choosing him. And really, she knows there was some truth in the things he said about her and this is a perfect example of that. She didn't even try to really be with him even though she's sure she wanted to because she couldn't forget about what her parents would think or what everyone else would think or about all of the consequences- like how they didn't seem like they could possibly work out. And she wants to at least offer that he's right, even if she knows she can't elaborate on that or address what happened between them (what's still happening between them). But she can't get the words out in the whole minute spent in silence before Addie gets back.

"Phew," Addie sighs getting out of the tractor and lugs the small, but surprisingly heavy box the few steps to Puck. "Here," she says handing them over. As Puck takes the box and walks it over to his truck she informs him, "I didn't check what was in it. Knowing Foster I probably should have, but just in case it was something meant to be between the two of you I didn't."

He sets it down in the bed of his truck and quickly opens it. It's a small (12 pack) case of the wine coolers he saw when he was down in Foster's basement. He smiles and tells Addie, "Yeah, it's just something we were talking about once." He walks back over to both of the women. He offers sincerely, "Foster was a really good guy. Probably one of the best men I've ever met."

Addie hugs Puck as she says tearfully, "Thank you." He doesn't try to stop her from the action and actually hugs back because he can recognize that this isn't a time to be difficult or distant.

When she releases him she's wiping at her eyes again. Seeing these kids again, she knows how much Foster would have loved that. She tells them, "I wish Foster could have seen you two again. And Kelyn, of course. We missed you, you know? And he liked both of you _so_ much."

(Puck can hear Quinn sniffling right beside him and he can just barely make out the tears streaming down her face from his peripheral vision. He doesn't know what makes him do it, but he shifts a little closer to her, close enough so that the back of his hand is just barely brushing against the back of hers. And that barely there contact sealed his fate and naturally propelled his hand to take on an instinct of it's own as the back of it pressed more firmly against hers for a few seconds before nearly venturing around her hand to grasp it full on.

Quinn feels his hand touching hers and thinks it's an accident at first. But then there's that distinct and lingering second touch. And she can barely keep listening to Addie because thinking about his hand, feeling his hand, has taken over all of her.)

Addie laughs suddenly, bringing both teens back to where they were and what they were doing. (Hands jerk apart.) She recalls fondly, "But as much as we liked you and I still do, God we didn't expect having young people around to make us feel so old. Our grandkids do, but we thought that was because they reminded us that we're plenty old enough to be grandparents." She shakes her head a little, trying to clear her wandering thoughts. Looking up at the teens before her she notices the two cars, the fact that one of them came here with a purpose and the other one was confused, and realizes that all the things her and Foster hoped for them probably weren't happening. Getting back to the fact that one of them came here without an actual reason and that she wanted to try for the end result she fondly speculated on with her husband, Addie informs Puck, "You know, I'm going to do you a favor." She looks to Quinn and asks, "Do you want to know why he was here today despite not having any idea about what was going on?"

Quinn had no idea where Addie could be going with this, but she did want to know the answer so she replied, "Sure."

Meanwhile, Puck is confused. He knows what he was doing in the parking lot, but it's not like he told Addie so how could she know? Also, he likes to think he's too mysterious to actually figure out (though he acknowledges that that idea may mostly be in his head).

"He's been coming by about once a week for the last couple months. He doesn't come in, just parks out here or down the road," Addie tells them to Puck's surprise (he didn't think they'd notice, he figured if they did they'd come out and ask why he hadn't come in, but then again he appreciates that they didn't because he never wanted to talk about it).

Quinn's not sure what to do with that. She feels like smiling and she's melting a bit against her will. She can't ask him about it and she can't really say anything at all though, because she's with Finn. And why he did that and the possibility that his answer could make her melt so much more, smile so much more, she couldn't hear it, because she's with Finn. So, she just smiles a little at Addie and hopes that's response enough.

There's honking somewhere in the distance and Addie looks to her house, notices a car in the distance at it. She tells them, "That must be one of my kids. I should be getting back." She hugs them both, thanks them for coming by, and promises everything will be okay, she'll be okay, and then she gets back on her tractor and leaves them standing there.

Puck expects a line of questioning about his coming back to this place that will only serve to embarrass him, but it doesn't come. Instead, Quinn tells him without even looking at him that she has to get going, has things to do and she's in her car and out of there before he can even get back in and start his truck. It's probably for the best that she didn't ask about it, he'd probably end up saying something stupid about why he came back since he knew he couldn't tell her the truth.

-o-o-o-

Quinn heads straight home. On her way to her room her mother unfortunately stops her, just to comment on how for a black dress, the one she's wearing isn't very sliming. Normally when her mother makes comments like these she can brush them off mostly by reassuring herself that her mother just likes to hear herself talk and if she's not really smart enough to have anything but criticisms to say (and when she has kids, she'll never ever be the same way).

(And thank God she left the now dirty sweater in her car, her mother would have been suspicious about that.)

This time, in the state of mind going to Foster's and seeing Addie and Puck and Foster's death left her in, it hangs with her. She tells her parents she's feeling ill, makes up an easy excuse to her "friends" and Finn and goes to bed early. She tries to force herself not to think of anything at all, but she spends the whole night worrying about…everything. She's not the person she wants to be, not at all, and maybe she needs to stop pretending sooner rather than later, before she completely loses herself to this part she's always playing.

-o-o-o-

Puck gets a call from Finn to hang out that night. Honestly, lately Puck has been avoiding his best friend- giving him the reason that he's going to continue to as long as he's in "homo-explosion." Really, Finn joining glee hasn't been much of a factor in why he's been making an effort to never be around him.

It started pretty much as soon as Finn started dating Quinn, this anger towards his best friend that just wouldn't go away. People have always claimed he has "anger issues" so feeling angry isn't anything new to him. Being pissed at Finn is new though, especially when he knows he doesn't actually have a reason to be angry at Finn at all. So for a while he tries to just ignore the anger and hang out with and treat his best friend the same as always. He succeeds, but with the added condition that it makes him a little more hostile towards complete strangers. He's the school bully though so no one seems to notice that change- how instead of just throwing stuff at people in the halls he's physically aggressive with them- no one notices except Finn. And the ironic thing is (he thinks it's irony, he's not actually sure what it is, but it sounds right enough to him) Finn wants to help him get over this sudden surge of anger that leaves him shoving people in halls into the lockers.

He doesn't really have to worry about all that much anymore though, because now he just constantly wants to rip his best friend's head off. He thinks this new, un-ignorable anger started when Finn and Quinn started playing the role of perfect high school couple. Then it got worse when it became clear that Finn was at least semi interested in that Rachel girl. Then it got (he hopes) as bad as can be when Finn told him that he kissed Rachel and would have probably done a lot more with her if there hadn't been some interruption- what, Puck doesn't know, Finn wouldn't say. When Finn didn't tell Quinn and went back to playing "perfect boyfriend" it doesn't get worse, this desire to beat the hell out of his best friend, it stays just as intense and ever so barely contained.

Tonight on the phone though, Finn practically begs him to hang out again, offers that he can't hold glee club against him because it's been getting worse and he probably won't be in it much longer. He can't argue with that, but he still doesn't want to go hang out with him. He asks Finn why he's not out with Quinn. Finn tells him that Quinn had called him and simply said that she was busy tonight. He comments that that sounds like a weak excuse, which he would think would prompt Finn to get suspicious, but it doesn't. Instead Finn just breezes past it and asks him to hang out again. He gives in, because he's running out of excuses and like he keeps telling himself, the way he feels isn't at all Finn's fault (it is his own fault though, and it could hurt Finn if he knew- and Finn would never do the same thing to him).

So he meets up with his best friend who seems bummed out because he put up with a lot of crap from everyone for joining glee and now that was falling apart. Finn also mentions in the list of things bugging him, making him pretty miserable, that Rachel doesn't talk to him anymore.

It takes a lot for Puck not to hit Finn then. Instead he offers that in his experience most girls aren't too happy when you hook up with them and then move on to someone else. It makes Puck feel a bit better that Finn mentions how guilty he feels for doing that to either girl, how bad he feels that he did that to Quinn. But the idea strikes him then, not for the first time, that even good guys like his best friend suck. Guys suck. Even a good guy like Finn, who has the best possible girlfriend in Quinn Fabray (he doesn't notice his own bias here), can cheat and can want other girls. It only took Finn four months to lose interest and if he's generally acknowledged as less than half as good as Finn, if he and Quinn had continued their… fling, how long would it have been before he lost interest and cheated? He figures such an event must have been their destiny, which makes him feel a bit better for avoiding it and because it allows him to write off his current wanting of Quinn as a consequence of him never reaching that point while he was with her, thus leaving them unfinished.

(He feels a bit like he's feeding himself a lot of crap, but it makes him feel better about himself, his decisions, Quinn, and Finn all the same. He may only be able to believe himself for a few hours, but at least he's able to breathe a little easier for those hours. For the last few months it's been difficult, just to breathe.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn conducts her Saturday as usual. She brushes away all worries from the previous night, determined to forget the entire day completely. The fact that she may very well be losing herself to the role she's always playing had concerned her, but it also keeps her thriving in high school rather than just surviving it. Plus, as her mother frequently reminds, it can be added to her college applications and she wants to have the best college applications ever so that she definitely gets out of this town. It's less than two more years, she figures, she can survive that much more pretending without losing herself completely (she hopes).

She calls Finn and talks with him for a bit, because she felt bad for blowing off their undefined plans when he'd been so great lately. She texts a few of her fellow Cheerio's – the usual gossip talk and put downs of people they don't like. Eventually these common Saturday tasks have to end as her mom reminds her that they have to go to the country club for the "blah, blah, blah." She's not sure why she always tunes her mother out, but when she tunes back in and her mother is telling her how she has to select a dress carefully as so many have made her look like she's carrying extra weight lately she remembers why it's always been better to only pretend to listen to her mother. She rolls her eyes at her mother's instructions after she leaves her room (but still, as she looks through her closet and tries things on, her mother's words are in the back of her mind making her scrutinize every dress and every detail of her appearance).

Despite leaving for the club at the same time as her parents, Quinn drives her own car, which her parents are fine with as they usually stay at these things pretty late and get quite trashed. Her mother tells her she looks nice in her dress, but oh, maybe that wasn't the best color on her? She says it with a smile and as if she wasn't the one who picked out the dress and requested that Quinn add it to her wardrobe as it fit the demure image that was her goal to keep. Quinn didn't really like the Lotusgrace embroidered cocktail dress. It had a high boat neck and a full, slightly pleated skirt, which doesn't serve to accurately portray anyone as thin despite how thin they may be. And though the embroidery was pretty, she didn't really think light gold was her best color. Yet she wore it with a smile as fake as her mother's when she saw her in it. (The thing was, despite not being a dress she would ever choose for herself especially since she thought it was way too old for someone her age, Quinn looked good in the dress. But still, her mother could only see the things she didn't like about Quinn in it.)

There aren't very many people around Quinn's age at the party and she doesn't like any of them. But having to socialize with people she doesn't like isn't anything new to her so she spends most of the party doing so flawlessly. Sometimes while she's talking to the other people there around her age she'll wonder if they're pretending as much as she is. She hopes some of them are, she'd hate to think that there are that many people out there that value all of the same unimportant things as her parents.

She has two unfortunate moments during the party- one induced by each parent. The one with her mother happens before they're seated for the dinner- turns out it's a charity dinner to raise money to remodel the main dinning room. She's doesn't mean to actually hear what her mother is saying to a group of wives that look like they could be clones of her- God knows she never actually _wants_ to listen to her mother talk- but she overhears her as she's getting a refill on her club soda (her mother-approved beverage at these type of things- it was all about her image) when she over heard her mother say, "Oh I know. I tried to tell Quinny that style wasn't in right now and that the neckline did nothing for her, but you know teenagers, they can never listen."

It's not even close to the first time she's caught her mother saying something like this, but knowing that doesn't serve to consol her at all. She tries not to think about it, ignore it like everything else her mother says, but there are always moments where she can't seem to do anything but feel the sting of her words.

Surprisingly, her dad's moment affects her much more deeply. It's a while after dinner and she's going to her dad to tell him that she's taking off to meet with friends and since it's just after ten, she'll be home by curfew in less than two hours. She tells him exactly that, smiling politely and apologizing for interrupting his conversation. She gives him a peck on the cheek and a hug dutifully and begins to walk away. Yet, she wanted to add that she hadn't seen her mother so he'd need to inform her, but when she pivots around her father's back is already turned in conversation with the men there again and he's saying, "Our Quinn's a good girl. She's the _perfect_ daughter. She doesn't go around kissing lots of boys, doesn't even associate with the wrong ones at all. She's too smart for that, and too determined to boot. You know she started an abstinence club at school? Got a ton of kids to join and she actually believes in it." He laughs just a little. He's also more than a little tipsy since he failed to realize all the men he's talking to already know all these things as they are close acquaintances.

Really, her father said very nice things about her. "Perfect daughter," well, that's what she was going for, wasn't it? It should leave her feeling relatively good. It should lift her spirits after overhearing her mother earlier and it shouldn't leave her at all hesitant to approach her father again. Instead, she can't approach him at all. She turns back around and heads for the parking lot, but when she gets to her car she doesn't start it and take off as planned. Instead, she just sits there and thinks.

All the things her father said about her reminds her of all the things she worried about the previous night. What he said was mostly true- except that he didn't know where she was or what she was doing most nights of the week. But would he really be upset to learn that she claimed to be volunteering and took a dance class instead or that she had found various secluded places to do homework? Even when she stopped pretending, she was still playing the role of perfect daughter.

She picked up her phone and almost called her sister to talk to her about it. Her sister was a "perfect daughter" too, maybe she'd get it. But thinking back, her sister _turned out_ to be a perfect daughter- marrying a man they liked, leading a life they liked. But in high school she did plenty of sneaking around behind their backs. Quinn knows for a fact that while she told their parents she was single in high school to focus on her studies and to make sure she upheld a Christian life-style, she actually snuck around with every boy on the football, basketball, and hockey team. Not to say that her sister was whorish, she's sure she wasn't--- though she was only eight when her sister graduated, four when she started high school, so she's not actually sure. It makes her put the phone down though, because her sister really was only pretending and she did do what she really wanted whenever she wasn't, that much was clear.

Quinn, however, maybe she did a few things she wanted- like the dance class- but she didn't go after plenty of things she wanted either. Her parent's ideas and instructions always at the back of her mind, holding her back. This makes her think of what Puck told her about how she was, about why Rachel's outburst in abstinence club threw her. She doesn't want to think about that again though so she starts her car, turns up her stereo, and drives home to change.

When she's headed to her closet, she catches a glimpse of herself in her floor-length mirror in the corner of her room. She stops then, scrutinizes again. She looks exactly the way her mother wanted her to, and yet the woman still wasn't happy. She looks exactly like the role she's always playing; perfect and prim and proper.

Her heart starts to race, breathing gets shallow, as she realizes this and she can't keep the dress on another second. She slips out of it hurriedly, undoing her hair from its neat up-do at the same time. She looks through her closet and realizes that nearly all of her outfits say the same exact thing as the dress she just took off. She finds skinny jeans and a plain short-sleeved t-shirt shoved into some conclave of her closet out of disuse. She puts them on and looks in the mirror again. She doesn't look the same. Not perfect, nor prim, nor proper. She looks normal, average. It makes her feel a little bit better.

Changing clothes can only do so much though. She had planned to meet up with some of the Cheerios, but really, why? Why should she go spend time with people that don't like her because she's always reminding them that she's at the top of their social pyramid? She can't imagine that they'd actually want to see her and she doesn't want to see them.

She doesn't want to pretend tonight. That's what it comes down to. After all the things she's been thinking about, how she almost never does what she wants and how she's been letting her parents influence who she really is and not just who she pretends to be, she can't let herself pretend tonight.

So Quinn spends an hour in her comfy jeans and t-shirt, thinking and snacking on cookies in the kitchen (the food at the country club was always horrible in her opinion- a better chef was what they should have been raising money for). She doesn't feel like doing this for the rest of the night and she doesn't feel like being in this house any longer, but then she doesn't know what she does want to do either.

Around eleven she gets a text, from Finn. He wrote: _How was the party with ur parents? _

Her parents would probably like her to say something diplomatic, like that it raised a lot of money. Normally, something of the sort would probably be the first thing she'd think of saying (as it was now) because they had become that ingrained in her head. With a few seconds more of thought, she decides to be honest with him and responds: _Boring_. She wants to elaborate, but they don't have that kind of relationship and despite knowing that it's her parents' influence here too (or at least their fault) she's not ready to change that, not with him.

He texts back, offering nicely: _Wanna come out? I'm just at a party, hanging with Puck._

Seeing his name on the screen in front of her, it sparks something. She handles the matter at hand first, texting back: _My feet hurt and I'm tired. Going to sleep. Ttyt._

He sends her another message saying okay and goodnight and she returns the goodnight. Since that means their conversation is officially over, she scrolls down her list of contacts quickly. When she gets to the initials she labeled him as she pauses and thinks about what she's doing. Why does she want to call him? What would she even say? But then again she wants to call him. And if she gives in and doesn't do it isn't she just giving in to the voice in her head that keeps her the person her parents want instead of the person she is? There's no logical reason to call him- except that she wants to and she needs to start doing more things she wants, tonight was proof of that. She needs to be like Rachel was in that one moment, going after something simply because she wanted it and, as Puck put it, saying fuck it to all the rest.

So she did. She took a deep breath and hit send on his number.

He answers on the second ring. "Hey," he says, like he doesn't get why she's calling and he starts down the path for the only reason she could be uncomfortably, "Uh, I don't know where Finn is but-"

"Do you want to meet me?" she cuts him off. That wasn't what she expected herself to say, but he was talking about Finn- which, given the fact she was calling his best friend, she couldn't handle- and when she opened her mouth that was just what came out. Now that she considers it, she really did want to see him instead of just talking to him on the phone.

He sighs. Yeah, he wants to meet her, whatever that means. He's been talking to a few girls all night, made good progress with all of them. And he's here with his best friend, her boyfriend. But yeah, he wants to meet her. Instead of just saying yes though (because he'd never be that eager with a girl- gotta play it cool) he asks, "What's going on?"

She shrugs, not registering that he won't see that. She bites her lip and considers what to say. She doesn't think of this as pretending- this is simply trying to say the right thing to make sure he says yes like she wants. It turns out though, that she can't come up with any lie, she can't come up with anything at all but the truth. "I don't know," she admits softly, "I wanted to call, don't know why and then… I just…" she trails off. She doesn't know how to put into words what she wants. She wants to feel like she's being herself. She wants to feel like she's going after what she wants. And she's wanted to do a lot of things concerning him for the longest time now, and despite their complicated circumstances she's willing to admit that now and not care about anything else. She gathers her courage (being herself and going after what she wants, it's not at all easy) and she finishes just above a whisper, quite and confiding, "I want to see you."

He swears his heart stopped for that long pause of hers; girl was trying to kill him. Oh but risking death was worth it, it was worth her and hearing her say that she wanted to see him in that way that made him sure that she meant it in the way he hoped. But as much as he's smiling like an idiot right now and feels like doing a victory dance, he tries to keep playing it cool as he agrees, "Okay. Where?"

She smiles and checks, "You're at an orchard party?"

"Yeah," he confirms as he begins scanning the crowd, hoping no one's paying attention to him.

She describes a cherry orchard about ten miles south east of the party (which no one from the party should have to pass by to get home) and asks him if he knows where it is. He's only got a good idea of where it is, but he lies and tells her he knows exactly where she's talking about (it wasn't manly not be good with directions and he's not losing points now of all times). She tells him she'll see him there in thirty minutes and hangs up.

He's still smiling even when he's hearing dial tone. He doesn't need thirty minutes to get there, but almost heads off to leave right now- until he realizes he was Finn's ride. So he seeks out Finn instead. He should feel bad about this, about going off to meet his best friend's girlfriend behind his back, but he feels too good about the fact that she wants to see him to feel even slightly guilty right now.

He finds Finn joking with some of their football teammates, pulls him away and lets him know, "I've got to be somewhere so you're going to have to find another way home."

Finn looks put out for a second, but then his eyes light up and he questions knowingly, "You're going off with some girl, aren't you? Who is it?"

"Nah," he denies, because lying, it really was second nature. But Finn just keeps looking at him like he knows him so he relents, "Okay, sort of. I'm meeting someone." The guilt seeps in just a little bit and in case he ever has to explain his actions here, he adds, "It's not really anything."

"Not yet," Finn tags on, knowing his best friend usually got most girls he wanted. Plus, Puck seemed a little weird lately. Maybe he was down, which meant that someone needed to be optimistic for him.

"Yeah," Puck agrees, guilt getting to him enough that he's not even looking Finn in the eyes anymore. And maybe that should have been a sign that this wasn't the right thing to do. But he's never normally that concerned with what's right and wrong, why should his best friend being involved make this any different? Plus, if he decides this is wrong, he doesn't get to see Quinn and he's not letting that happen. Not after all this time he's had to watch them together and have this nagging feeling that he's missing out.

He hurries out of the party then, not able to stay around the best friend he knows he's betraying, and eager to see the girl that wanted to see him.

-o-o-o-

Quinn calls her parents before she leaves her house. Her curfew is about fifteen minutes after the time she said she'd meet Puck and her parents were actually awake tonight and would notice her breaking curfew. There was a very good chance that they'd be too trashed to remember that she wouldn't be back by curfew, but it'd be just her luck that they'd remember so she plays it smart and calls them- tells them that Brittany is having a sleep over for the Cheerios so she'll be back tomorrow morning, which they're fine with. Actually she plans on being back much sooner than she told them, just not by curfew, so she figures that if they hear her come home whenever, she'll just say the girls got in some petty fight so she left to come home and sleep in her own bed instead- it's what usually happened when they all got together like that anyway.

Quinn then spends a few minutes standing in front of the mirror again, considering that she should change. But no, she was comfortable and felt normal in this and she had a feeling she was over thinking all of this anyway. She was going to go see Puck and she was going to do so because she wanted to- she really wanted everything to just be that simple.

So she grabs a sweater and slips on a pair of flats. She doesn't bother transferring her things from her clutch to a purse because she just needs to have her driver's license and phone on her anyway so it doesn't matter. She watches the clock for a minute, considering that if she leaves now would she be early. She toys with the cross around her neck unconsciously as she ponders this, but decides that it shouldn't matter if she's early and she doesn't care, she just wants to be there. So she leaves, finally (and not suspecting that her world will be changed by the time she steps foot in this house again).

-o-o-o-

When Puck gets to the place he's pretty sure was the one she was describing, he's twenty minutes early. He gets out of his truck, paces a bit. There's this weird feeling in his stomach- kind of like that thing from _Alien_ is rooting around in there and is about to pop out at any second (or butterflies, but that sounds too girly).

After a couple of minutes of pretty hardcore pacing, he's ready to admit that he's nervous. But he can't be nervous so he decides to drink one of the wine coolers still in his trunk to ease his jitters. He can't down it, even though he feels like it, because though he only had one beer tonight, he knows he'd never get a cab all the way out here so he needs to be plenty sober enough to drive home later. He takes a few sips (along with some deep breaths), opens the bed of his truck and plops down on it, trying to relax (or at least appear relaxed for when she gets there).

Luckily, he doesn't have to spend a lot of time by himself pretending to be at ease because she shows up ten minutes before she told him to meet her there. She parks a row of tree's over from his truck and she's smiling a little as she walks up to him, which makes him smile too.

"Hi," she greets, not having any idea what else to say to him.

"Hey," he returns and casually takes a sip of his drink (can't smile while drinking and he's really got to stop that whole smiling business- makes him feel kind of sappy). He cringes a little as the sweet drink goes down. He's always hated wine coolers. He's got to start keeping beer in his trunk.

She sits down on his truck bed, the opposite side of the one he's on and though she'd like to sit closer, her nerves get the best of her and she can't do that- she settles on the right side (behind where the passenger seat was inside the truck).

He wants to know why she asked him here, why she wanted to see him, but he doesn't want her to know how badly he wants to know that- it'd be so un-cool. So he begins conversationally, hoping he was getting on a good direction, "So what'd you do tonight?"

"Parents dragged me to a party at the country club," she responds honestly, already resolved to the fact that she doesn't hide things from him that she does from everyone else. Yet she's not going to come right out and divulge her every thought either. Doing that seemed pathetic and a bit insane somehow.

He glances at her attire, which he noticed immediately was different than what she usually wore (not a bad different either). He quips sarcastically, "Must have been a fancy party."

"It was. But I changed. Trying something new," she tells him, though she knows she would never try these clothes for church or for school if she didn't have to wear her cheer uniform. It felt like Saturday clothes that were entirely her, but honestly, she did like the cute dresses too- at least the ones her mother hadn't been involved in the purchasing of at all.

"Why?" he asks, because he honestly has no idea why she'd try something new. As far as he was concerned, there was never anything to change, not about the girl he hung out with.

She glances over at him, meeting his eyes, and admits, "Because you were right."

He knows what she's referring to and suddenly the fact that she called him doesn't seem so mysterious. It also doesn't seem like it'll necessarily head in a direction he'll like. He's not willing to find out what direction it's going yet and risk this being over. So, instead of replying seriously, he says cockily, "Of course I was."

She's smiling and shaking her head, but she shoves him into the side of the truck good-naturedly anyway. He says "Ow," but he's laughing through it. She laughs a little too.

She notices the drink in his hand again and she thinks about how tired she is of playing it safe. She's never had more than a few sips of a wine cooler, but she liked it (and she knows it doesn't have enough alcoholic content to get her drunk so there's no real risk here). She asks him, "You have another one of those?"

He's got eleven more and he hesitates to tell her that. Maybe something serious was going on here. Maybe she was having a real bad night and she was seeking comfort in all the wrong places (him and now alcohol). But he really didn't want that to be true so he says, "Sure," as he reaches back and plucks one out of the box. He hands it over and tells her, "It's courtesy of Foster."

As she twists off the cap she questions, "This is what Foster gave you?"

"Yep," he confirms. He doesn't want to get into it so he explains simply, "It's a long story. Just this conversation we had once, which I guess he remembered since he wanted to give these to me."

Foster, that makes her feel a little like she's drowning her sorrows as she takes her first drink. But he died, unexpectedly and she just found out yesterday so she figures it's just unfortunate timing and that feeling of hers is wrong. She turns in the truck, leans her back against the side and stretches her legs out towards Puck. She starts recalling a story Foster once told her about his life and pretty soon that's just what they're doing- reminiscing about different stories Foster told them and laughing a lot because the funny ones were the ones Foster liked to tell best.

An hour later they're both still nursing their original drinks and conversation is somehow turning back to things that actually matter.

"So how was the party at the country club?" Puck inquires, a bit of teasing about the country club part because he doesn't like sounding too serious.

She shakes her head. Looking down and away from him for the first time in a long while. She peals at the label on her bottle. She considers giving him the same one word response she gave Finn, but she didn't feel like seeing him to have walls up around someone. "My parents are," she begins, but she trails off not knowing how to finish. She doesn't want to say the things she's concluded about them, not really, because she still hopes they're not true or at least they'll change. Maybe then she'll have the parents she wants. She starts over and admits instead, "I'm never going to be like them."

He got the weight of what she said even if it was vague. He asks the natural question about the people that he only knows from accidentally reading the local newspaper and finding them in it, "What are they like?"

She sighs and she can't come up with any veiled truth and though she doesn't want them to be the way they are, the fact that they've helped make her this person who never goes after what she really wants instead pursuing all the things she should want, doesn't really compel her to defend them at the moment. She lists, "They're the type of people that are only nice to people to their face but never behind their back. They're the type of people that claim to be Christian and religious, but aren't charitable or forgiving or accepting or any of the other things that Christianity actually promotes. They're the type of people that donate a lot of money for the best legal team for the people that get arrested for throwing rocks at pregnant teenaged girls out side of Planned Parenthood clinics."

"That's cold," Puck interjects. He'd never heard of people doing stuff like that. "I mean, I'm all for throwing stuff at people who deserve it- it's usually really fun. But, pregnant girls? Even if they're total sluts that's just wrong."

"I know," she agrees, "I'd make fun of them in high school as much as I would anyone else, but physically hurting someone who's carrying a baby- you'd think them supporting something that awful would actually surprise me, but it didn't. They're…they're the type of people that had kids to add to their accomplishments and not because they wanted us." She rationalizes, "And I know I should be grateful that they've provided for me very well and that my sister and I always had a very nice roof over our heads and food to eat and anything else we ever wanted. But it's never felt that good to know that they'll give us all that stuff, but they don't care who we are or what we want. They just want us to stick to the image they want fulfilled no matter what."

"Their loss," he says softly and into his wine cooler.

She smiles, bites her lip a little, looking down and hoping that that and the darkness hides her reaction. It was a sweet thing to say and the simple sentiment makes her feel immensely better (she's not sure it would have meant as much coming from anyone else). But she knows how being sweet makes him uncomfortable, that much has been pretty clear for a while. So, she doesn't comment on it, doesn't dwell on it, and shows her appreciation for it by changing the topic, "How was your night?"

_Getting a helluva lot better since she called him_, he thinks. But he just revealed one embarrassing confession about how he thought of her and he's so not going to do two in a row. Thinking about his night and how his best friend had been a big part of it, he knows he really should never say anything like that to her again. He shrugs and replies simply, "Pretty typical."

She waits, expecting him to elaborate, but he doesn't. She wasn't expecting that. They had been talking and it had been so easy, so nice. But now he'd clearly stopped. He'd given her a vague, blow-off answer and that was all. Maybe she'd deluded herself into thinking the last hour was more than it was. Maybe despite being what she wanted, this was a bad idea. She glances at her watch, considering that it may be time to give up on this, it certainly seemed like he was giving her the opportunity to.

He sees her glance at her watch out of the corner of his eye and he feels like kicking himself. He didn't mean his being smarter about this to make her think she should leave. He really didn't want her to leave and the thought of her doing so made it pretty easy to decide that he didn't care what this did to the rest of his life, what the consequences could be, as long as she didn't leave. He speaks up before she can mention leaving, "Kel's still taking dance classes. She really likes them." He adds with a victorious smile, "And she's not hanging out with that boy anymore."

She smiles, not feeling like leaving anymore, and teases, "You know she's going to date. Given that she's your sister she'll probably be dating soon."

"No she won't," he denies, "I'm not letting her out of the house to associate with any boys until she's well into her twenties...and maybe even then-"

"You can't hold her hostage," she interjects.

"Yeah, that's what she thinks too," he agrees, but he's determined to prove everyone wrong who thinks that.

There's this very familiar warm feeling in her chest as he talks about his sister. Not for the first time, she thinks about how no one else may get to see this side of him, and it's such a good side. All the things he does at school feel irrelevant, because the fact that he's so good with his sister makes her have a strong faith in the fact that he's actually a very good man. But thinking again of how no one else may not get to see him like this, she decides to admit something to him that she's been thinking awhile, he deserves it. She smiles softly and compliments sincerely, "You're a really good brother to her." He starts to shake his head and before he can deny it she insists, "Seriously, Kelyn's really lucky to have you in her life."

It's nice of her to say and it makes him feel so good that she thinks that about him, but he's thought about this a lot. It's one of the things that will keep him awake some nights (other nights, it's the fact that he has his best friend's girlfriend stuck in his head). "I'm the kind of guy I hope she never finds out exists," he confesses seriously and looking to the ground again because he has trouble being that honest.

"Not to her you're not," Quinn points out. Yet he has a point and she doesn't want to blow that off despite disagreeing. She adds, smiling a bit, "And you're not that guy all the time." She doesn't want to say that she means he's not that guy to her, but she hopes that's what he gets from what she said. She heard a lot of things over the past months, had to see some things too, and they bothered her and she can recall them so easily. Thinking of those things and hoping to never see them again, she suggests, "You don't have to be like that at all."

Yeah, he gets that. He didn't really feel much better about his sister, but it did feel good to know that Quinn didn't think he was that bad guy to her. And he gets what she's saying about not being the player, bully ever because he's not always and he could just stop altogether. But then what would he do? Have a girlfriend? The only girl he ever pictured himself ever being able to be with in that capacity was sitting right next to him, and was currently the girlfriend of his best friend. He's not going to say any of that though, so instead he turns it around on her, "Yeah, I could be someone different. You could too you know."

Technically he's right and after the night she had with her parents she really wants to believe that she could just change, be someone different, be herself from now on. Realistically though, she knows the next nearly two years until college will be a lot easier if she doesn't and she should just be consoled by the fact that once college comes she'll be completely free for the rest of her life. It would be nice if she could really be certain she's just pretending though, if she could be herself and go after what she wants more. So she indulges that notion for a minute, considering his suggestion and pointing out, "Changing would probably make high school harder for both of us."

True. Well, actually he's pretty sure that it doesn't matter what he does anymore. After all the beatings he's doled out he's pretty sure no one will ever cross him even if he starts coming to school cross-dressing. He's not so sure it'd be that much of a problem for her either, not for the girl he's gotten to know. He retorts, "Yeah, it'd be a challenge, but I thought you like a challenge."

"Well when you put it that way," she concedes, smiling to herself because it felt like he knew her really well and that made her happier than she would have expected. She can't help but let reality seep back in though. Her smile fades and she rationalizes the path she knows she's going to follow, "Two more years of playing a role isn't so bad though. It's not even a whole two years."

He sighs softly because he kind of knew this was how things would end up. This is why they didn't work out before. Here they were back in the exact same place, neither one of them willing to change anything, neither one of them willing to do what they really wanted. And he came here tonight thinking that she'd called him and wanted to meet secretly because she finally wanted to change, finally wanted to take a chance on something. And he really didn't care if she stopped pretending to always be the perfect daughter and bitchy head cheerleader. He wanted the thing that changed about her to be that she wanted him. But it was too hard to deny now that she was still planning to play it safe in the rest of her life and so his presence here probably didn't mean anything that he wanted it to. And unlike before, he didn't feel like not admitting that he didn't want things to be the same. "What am I doing here?" he implores, barely above a whisper and laying it all out on the line (or starting to at least).

She wasn't ready for that. The question takes Quinn by surprise, makes her sit up a little straighter and her heart start to pound in her chest. She prays she heard him wrong because suddenly she's not ready for any of this. "What?" she returns.

He may not have said it loudly, but it was dead silent out here and he really didn't think she missed what he said. He shakes his head, already certain that this is about to turn out exactly how he hoped it wouldn't. He repeats, slower this time making sure she caught every word, "What am I doing here?"

She swallows, glances away briefly as she scrambles for an honest answer that she can actually manage to get out. She settles on repeating earlier words, "Like I said on the phone, I wanted to see you."

"Why?" he's quick to demand. He's tired of avoiding this. He either needs to get what he wants here or it needs to be absolutely clear that he never will.

Because… because… she wanted to. Because when she needed to be herself tonight and she needed to go after what she wanted and thinking of those two things he was first person she thought of. Because she felt more like herself when she was with him than with anyone else and she didn't want to just sit here and talk she wanted… she wanted something more. (Because yesterday he reached for her hand and it's all she's been able to think about since. She can still feel it there, touching her. And none of it is even slightly insignificant because before, when they were... whatever, and they'd be kissing or making out he'd take her hands and intertwine their fingers. Like he just needed to be touching her and he didn't care if it was an entirely innocent place, as long as he could feel her. And she knows she felt- _feels_- like that about him.) And she sits there on the bed of his truck, her eyes holding his and trying to make any of those words come out, but they're not. Maybe it was never her parents holding her back from being who she wants to be because here she is, completely unable to do what she wants.

The fact that she's not saying anything is answer enough for Puck. He hops off his truck bed and says, "I should get going."

She follows suit, getting off of his truck as she finds her voice enough to ask, "Why?"

He shuts the bed of his truck as soon as she's cleared it and heads for his drivers side door. He can't answer her question because the only answers he has are things like because he came thinking it meant something, that she didn't want his best friend anymore and wanted him instead. But he's already said too much approaching that topic tonight and he's clinging to what dignity he has left. Instead of replying, when he gets to his door to open it, he feels a little guilty that he's going to drive off and leave her here so he says, "You should probably head home too."

Quinn doesn't know how everything suddenly fell apart. She doesn't understand why this is so difficult or confusing. As she watches him head for his drivers side door she realizes that she can't keep living her life not doing what she wants so she has to say something because she doesn't want him to leave. Something just has to come out of her mouth because what's happening now isn't what she wants. After he tells her to leave, she very briefly considers that maybe he was right and maybe she should leave and give up on all of this because it was probably a horrible idea anyway. But the second he makes the slightest move towards his truck again she calls, "Why did you go to Foster's?" It wasn't exactly what she expected to say, she could have just asked him to stay (though she knows she probably wouldn't have a response as to why). But now that the question is out there she realizes that she's been wondering about that since Addie mentioned it and not having an answer to it is part of the reason she's terrified. He already knows so much about her and she knows that he could probably break her heart if she changed how things currently were (with her actually dating Finn). And as much as she'd like to take the risk and just tell him she wants him to stay because she wants him, she needs to hear that he wants her first. Because maybe he had sort of called her out on what they were doing there, but he'd dated other girls since her and he'd never come out and said anything about not liking that she's Finn's girlfriend and he'd never said or even really hinted at wanting her. So she needs…something from him first.

He stopped in his motion to get in his truck, but he's had ten seconds and he's not responding so she repeats, "Why did you go to Foster's every week?"

He sighs heavily. He turns around to face her. She's standing back at the end of his truck and, god, with her looking at him like that, eyes earnest and pleading, he's tempted to actually tell her. But he already knows that this isn't going anywhere, she'd made that clear just a couple minutes ago, so what was the point of putting himself out there more? So he returns, "Why do you care?"

"I care," she tells him honestly, simply. She's opening herself up now, even if it's too hard to get all the words out, she's saying enough and she hopes she can read all the rest, all the reasons why she cares, as easily as he can usually read her.

He wanted to believe that she cared for all the reasons he wanted her to and the way she was looking at him now told him he was right. But despite what he'd said to her earlier, he's actually usually wrong and he'd already been plenty of times just tonight. He sets his jaw, shakes his head a little, trying not to let his one word answer get out (you). But in meeting her eyes and holding them so firmly, the answer he was trying not to say was there, written all over his face and revealed in his eyes an the way he was looking at her.

Quinn didn't think him not saying anything would be enough for her. He was a big risk and the scariest one she would probably ever make at that so she figured she'd need verbal confirmation that he wanted her, that the answer to her question was that he went there for her (out of missing her, wanting her). But she didn't need him to say it, she felt it. It made her heart hammer harder in her chest and her breath get shallow, and it made her brain stop worrying, stop thinking. She found that that was enough because she was quickly propelled forward, closing the more than half a dozen feet between them and leaning up to kiss him.

He didn't expect this. He figured he was all wrong in thinking she ever wanted him, but he's never been happier to be wrong. And he doesn't care that it's only been a matter of minutes since he was thinking about how she's taken (and by his best friend), because he wants her and apparently she feels the same.

She sinks back down on her feet after a second, but she doesn't stop kissing him because he's kissing her back and she doesn't want that to stop, so she pulls him down with her. After a few seconds she can feel him smiling against her lips as they continue to kiss and it makes her smile too.

He pulls her as close as he possibly can, intent on never letting her go. With his eyes closed and her kissing him it doesn't seem like such a big deal or bad idea to say what he hadn't earlier. So in between kisses he mummers confidingly, "I went there hoping to see you."

She didn't think it was possible after the moment she realized that would be his answer, but she feels even better. She feels so happy she's not sure it's normal or safe and she honestly couldn't care less. She just wants to feel like this forever and if that means being with him forever she's really okay with that.

After quite a few minutes of standing out there in the cherry orchard kissing, he starts to finagle them into his truck and onto his front seat. She knows it's a smart move because it'd be more comfortable, but somehow it doesn't feel like it's what she wants. She doesn't want to stop this, being with him, being near him, feeling this ridiculously amazing. But she knows from past experience that his truck can feel cramped pretty quick, it smells like boy (and not in a good way), and he probably wouldn't want to keep it parked out here forever. Plus, just staying right here, feels like they may keep this thing between them contained to right here and she doesn't want to. She wants this to be more than just right here, right now. So as he's trying to gently lean her back into his truck, she breaks away from him and suggests, "How about we find somewhere to go?"

He can't think about anything more than the fact that he was just kissing her, she's hot, and he really wants her so the words that came out of her mouth super stump him. He's got absolutely no idea where she could be talking about. He didn't know what type of place she'd want to go to (like a Denny's, maybe she was hungry?) or someplace private (where the hell would that be? Most girls he was with snuck him into places they knew of or he had places at school). Left with no other coherent thought, he asks, "Like where?"

"Your place?" she suggests and she knows she should mean that to be an entirely innocent suggestion, but right now, with him, she doesn't feel like it is or like she necessarily wants it to be.

It takes him nearly a full minute to process what she said. Quinn Fabray, the girl he called Jesus Freak and Virgin Mary, wanted to go to his house with him and even if she just wanted to play scrabble that still felt like it was monumental. He realizes then that he's actually cool either way. Sure, typically he expects girls to put out, he expects sex, but the fact that she wants him, clearly in a romantic role given what they just stopped doing, is plenty for now (he's realistic enough to know that his nature may not always leave him satisfied with this, but who knows how far down the line that could be?). That realization leaves him a little freaked out since he's never felt like that about a girl before, but it leaves him pretty excited about this too. He's never felt like less of a bad-guy than he does with her looking at him like that, like she wants him and like he's good enough to be with her. So he smiles a little and responds, "Yeah. We could do that. I could sneak you to my room and we could hang out in there."

She's taken a lot of chances tonight. She called him, she met with him, she asked him about his going to Foster's, she kissed him without verbal confirmation about his answer to said question. So far, every risk had paid off better than expected because she's never felt this completely elated. And she should worry about the implications of being alone in his bedroom with him. She should be rationalizing that she's never let any guy get further than she's wanted him to and she's never let Puck get that far with her either so she'd probably remain completely in control despite their location. Instead, she doesn't care about any of that. She just wants him and wants this completely blissful feeling to stay. She finally feels like she's living her own life, like she's free and she's not letting that go. She's not going to let herself get bogged down by thinking too much or worrying over consequences. She just wants to feel and he makes her feel so ridiculously good. So though the suggestion should make her wary, she just smiles and tells him, "Let's go."

(Here's something you should know: By this time tomorrow, she'll regret every single chance she took. By this time tomorrow, he'll hate her and himself with equal intensity. By this time tomorrow, everything will be different between them. Again.)

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**A/N: I hope you enjoyed the chapter. **

Yes, this was the pre-they-create-a-baby part, but there will be a page or two of that starting out the next chapter. But don't expect to then read about them actually getting pregnant as I won't be changing the rating to include that content.

**Next chapter title: **_We try to talk it over, but the words come out too rough_ – from "Best of My Love" by The Eagles.

Finally, remember to **PLEASE REVIEW**. I haven't heard from about ninety percent of the people who have this on alerts or favorites and I'd love to sometime before the story is over (which is a ways away, many more chapters to come) so I'm hoping those of you I haven't heard from will be compelled to review at some point.

**Thank you for reading! **


	7. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Greetings! I know, I'm surprised to see an update from me too. But it was my birthday Saturday and since I can't afford to give myself any kind of gift that requires me to spend any money, I gave myself the gift of blowing off school work for two whole days and indulging in anything (free) that I wanted to do. Getting this chapter out was one of those things and I wrote it in practically one sitting. It's much shorter than previous chapters, which won't be a trend, but it ninety percent of it concentrates on a span of less than twenty-four hours so keeping up the immense length of previous chapters and actually producing an even fic for once wasn't possible.

**Very important:** Thank you to all the wonderful people who reviewed! You guys are so AWESOME!

Oh, and speaking of reviewers, KellieMcD, first, just to let you know, you have messaging/replying blocked. Secondly to answer your question, this story will become AU according to episode 14 ("Hell-o") and on because the course of it was decided long before new episodes began to air and I won't be altering the story to fit this unexplained (and likely doomed) Quick we've been given.

By some miracle I've actually already made it a few pages into the next chapter, but as I mentioned in my last authors note I do have quite a lot of work on my plate (eighteen papers in the next four weeks before my term ends) so it's unlikely it will get out in the near future. However, I do think it's likely I'll be able to update once or twice more before the season finally hopefully.

Okay, shutting up now. I hope you enjoy the chapter!

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**Cheated Hearts

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**

_V. We try to talk it over, but the words come out too rough _

(Here's something you should know: She hold's his hand as they drive back to his place. It's not the first time he's held hands with a girl- far from it. But this feels new all the same.)

When he pulls up to the curb outside his building, Puck pauses at his trunk as Quinn begins heading for the door. What if she intends to stay there all night talking? What if she wants to play a game, like Scrabble? He's not so good with spelling and he doesn't want to look stupid. He's also not always so good with talking and he doesn't want to look stupid by way of it either. A little more alcohol could provide an easy excuse for any ensuing stupidity though. He still hates wine coolers, but he knows there's nothing inside so he grabs one for himself- just in case he needs that excuse- and he grabs one for her too because it may look rude of him otherwise and he doubts she'd want it but the gesture should make him look good.

He jogs to catch up to her at the door to his building and creeps up the stairs with her, trying not to disturb anyone in the building so they don't get caught. He slides his key into the locks and turns them just as carefully, sticking his head through the door to make sure all is clear before he does a test run to his room to check the same thing. He hurries back, grabs her hand and pulls her quickly and quietly behind him and into the apartment, shutting the door, and down the hall to his room as fast as possible.

As soon as they get in his room, he carefully shuts his door and leans against it as he lets out a sigh of relief. He never really has girls to his room- especially when his family is in the apartment- so this is more than a little nerve wracking for him.

Quinn spends a minute taking in these new surroundings. She's not sure what she expected his bedroom to be like, but somehow this fits. It's fairly sparse and surprisingly clean (except for the pile of dirty clothes in the corner and the banana peal on his dresser). Besides the furniture (bed, dresser) there's not much else in the room. Knowing how much he seems to sacrifice for his family, it doesn't surprise her that he wouldn't have much that was his own.

Puck notices her just looking around and gets a little more nervous about this. She knows him pretty well so he wonders what more she's learning as she's gazing around with interest. To distract her, he reaches for the bottles he tucked in back pocket as he says, "I was still kind of thirsty and I didn't finish that one in the orchard so I grabbed myself one more. Grabbed you one too, if you want it?" He's not sure he's drinking much more yet, even though the uncertainty of what they're doing here is making him antsy, but he needed something to say.

Quinn looks at the offered drink. She's not drunk. She had maybe half of her wine cooler at the orchard and she doesn't even have a slight buzz. But she realized what she wanted to happen tonight as soon as he kissed her back and despite the fact that she's certain, she's certain about her decision, a little more liquid courage would probably help. She grabs the bottle from him and twists off the cap hastily. Before she can change her mind she takes a drink and doesn't stop, gulping it down until there's only half a bottle left.

"Whoa," Puck says surprised. He so wasn't expecting her to down the drink. Hell, he wasn't expecting her to drink it at all. "Uh," he begins uncertainly, "I could get you some water if you're just thirsty."

She's struggling to breath easily now so Quinn stops drinking, taking the bottle away from her mouth and breathing slightly heavy as she notices she only got half down in her rush. But again she has a feeling that if she doesn't start going through with this now, she may not ever. So she turns, sets the bottle down on the dresser behind her, and lifts her sweater and shirt over her head in one swift motion as she turns back around to face him.

Puck breaths out another, "Whoa," surprised by her actions again. Shockingly enough he's never been in this situation before. Usually, when he sleeps with a girl, he suggests it and she agrees, she suggests it and he agrees, or... nope, pretty much every time there's been at least that propositioning by him or the girl of him. This is really different though. He's confused and not sure he's on the right path thinking that sex is where this will end up despite the fact that she just almost stripped halfway in his room. "Not that I'm not all for this," he says with a gesture to her and choosing each word carefully because he has no idea what the right thing to say is right now, which causes him to stall. She just downed half of her drink, he reminds himself, and she's not this girl who's here just for a night with him, just for some fun, and she's not one of his usual types of girls to him either so he can't go any of the normal routes and take her up on what appears to be a non-verbal suggestion. (It crosses his mind that maybe she was only doing this because it's what she expected him to be all about. But no, she looks at him like he's better than that so she has to know he wouldn't be like that with her.) He sighs a little and offers, "Just because you're here doesn't mean anything has to happen here."

"I know," she quickly responds because she believes he'd spend the night with her any way she wanted- even if she wanted to watch the mutually hated _Titanic_.

Even though she hadn't said her intention, he was sure he was getting the right message assuming what she wanted. He has to be cautious here though, because he doesn't want to mess this up (it's too important). "You sure?" he checks, asking quietly because it feels like there's something easily breakable in this moment.

She feels a warmth settle in her chest and radiate throughout her body at the way he's looking at her, at the significance of his gesture. She knows it defies his reputation and he's being different with her because with her, he's a good guy. And that makes it not matter that many girls may have been in this very bed beside her with him before because the guy who did that isn't the guy standing in this room with her now. He's different with her, he's better with her. And maybe she'll be the only girl he's ever like this with. And maybe he's the only guy who will make her feel this whole and good.

She never expected this for herself. She actually believed in abstinence club and waiting for marriage. But lately, (since she started spending time with him all those months ago) she's been thinking that marriage wasn't the goal, the right guy was. She never thought that when she found the right guy she'd rush into things like this, especially sex. But _God_, she's felt so fragmented her entire life, like she's only partially living, but tonight she's felt _alive_ and _whole_ and she knows that's because of him and how they feel about each other. That was important- what she was feeling now, she could tell he felt it too. Because of the way he looked at her now, because of the way he always looked at her, and because of what he was offering now that she knows made her different for him. All of which makes her decision seem so easy. "I'm sure," she tells him evenly, the happiness over feeling this confident about this oozing out in her tone.

She walks to him, soft purposeful steps closing the space between them. He's sure it's not normal for his heart to be thumping this hard, but if being with her gives him a heart attack at sixteen he's willing to take the risk. When she gets to him, her eyes having stayed on his, she pauses and looks at him for a minute. They never turned on the light in his room and the only light they have is the moonlight, which should make it difficult to read his face, his eyes, but it's not and what she sees there only confirms her idea that she's doing the right thing here. While she just stands there and looks at him, he realizes that he's never wanted a girl even half as much as he wants her and unlike earlier times when he's realized that, he's okay with it this time, okay with the way it means he feels about her too.

So Quinn leans forward, kissing him softly and moving ahead with a decision she was sure was right. (She'll come to consider it her biggest mistake and to consol herself she'll tell herself that the wonderful haze of happiness wasn't induced by him, but by the wine coolers _he_ got her drunk on. She needs to cope somehow.)

-o-o-o-

When it's over and breathing and hearts have calmed and all is quiet, she lays tucked into him, his arm around her. Somewhere in the back of her mind she had worried that she'd regret it as soon as it was too late to take back. But as she laid here now, she smiled content, still feeling like she was in the exact place she was meant to be.

Meanwhile, Quinn hadn't said anything and Puck worried that maybe that was a bad sign. As difficult as it was- the idea of stopping- he had checked with her multiple times, made sure she still wanted to go through with sleeping with him. But he knows about her values and that this was a really big deal for her and now that it's over and she hasn't said anything, he can't help thinking that maybe she wants to take it back. (Which makes him feel horrible for thinking that he wouldn't take this night back for anything.)

Eventually, Puck can't just keep wondering if this is going to turn south or not. He strokes her arm with the hand that's attached to the arm that's wrapped around her and prompts, "Hey." She glances up at him and he asks (hoping for an answer he wants to hear), "You're not wishing you could take it back, right?"

She smiles, liking that he cares enough that he's not hiding how worried he is right now at all. "No," she assures. She reaches across him and takes his other hand, the one that's not currently wrapped around her. She intertwines their fingers, stokes his hand with her thumb. She wishes she had something else to say to him, but she's not sure what to say, not sure what she feels like saying. She would have expected to feel too awkward in a situation like this to want to still be here or talk at all, but that's not what's stopping her. She wants what she says to be real and honest and she has a lot of things she wants him to know that qualify as both, she just can't seem to think clearly enough to decide on which one to start with. And part of her doesn't even want to try and decide, just wants to stop thinking entirely and enjoy how happy she is.

Puck, however, can't stop thinking. He's been with a lot of girls (cause that's the way studs roll, word), but this is different. This doesn't end as soon as their feet touch the ground and, for a change, he's okay with that. What he's not okay with is that he doesn't know what comes next, what happens next, what they do. And laying here with her, knowing he'd like this to be a regular thing, he can only think of all the things that could happen next that could take it all away. Which makes him think of his best friend and how technically the girl in his arms is still his. Despite how it's been the best night ever, he can't help but feel horrible and guilty for that. Voice honest (but unable to hide his hope) he asks quietly, "What do we do next?"

She thought a line like that from him would naturally have insinuative subtext, but not the way he says it so she doesn't bother buying herself a moment more by pretending to misunderstand. It's not that she didn't want to define things because she liked order and knew the label they would decide would make her happy. But they weren't in an easy spot here and she was hoping to spend a little while longer ignoring that. She sighs and considers, "Well, I need to break up with Finn tomorrow," she glances at the clock and corrects, "later today actually." Giving in to the thoughts she had pushed away Quinn continues, "Then we can't…I don't want to hurt him so we can't…". She trails off not wanting to say that they can't be together because that's not what she wants, but she doesn't want to break up with Finn on a Sunday and show up to school dating his best friend on Monday. He was a good guy, he didn't deserve the way she was treating him.

"We'll sneak around," he finishes for her. She looks up at him surprised and he continues, "Then when Finn gets over you I'll talk to him about wanting to go out with you and we'll act like this started then."

"What if it takes months for him to date someone else?" she questions and not because she actually thinks Finn loves her and would need that much time. She could tell she was different for Puck, that he felt differently about her than most girls, but she still didn't expect him to be so willing to actually date her so she wants to see how much more she can get out of him about them.

He shrugs and returns questioningly, not understanding, "Then it takes months?"

That wasn't the type of thing she was looking for him to say, so she asks getting to her point, "So you want to still be with me months from now?"

Why the hell was she asking these questions? Was it a bad sign? He returns, suspiciously, "Don't you want to be together months from now?"

She sighs again and rolls her eyes. This was becoming much more difficult than it needed to be. She knew she wanted to be with him, that he wanted to be with her, and that she wanted to be with him for as long as she could. But apparently he wasn't picking up on that because it seemed like she needed to say it first. Well, fine, "Yes." Talking in circles has been disastrous for them so she's done with it and explains, "I wouldn't be here like this if I wanted anything less than a really long relationship with you. But is that what you want?"

What he wants isn't an easy question for him. It's not a matter simply of what he wants but also what he can do, what he's likely to do, what he will want. But she was just honest with him, which felt pretty damn good to hear that a girl like her would want to be with him for a long time, so she deserves him to be honest too. He answers, "That's what I want right now." Knowing that was confusing he continues, "Look, I don't do things like this. I want to right now and, right now, I want to for a long time. But I don't do things like this because they're not really who I've been so I can't promise that I'll keep wanting this as long as I want to right now."

It's not exactly the type of thing she was hoping to hear. Though she does like how honest he is with her (it feels so nice to be completely real with someone) and she can't fault him for having doubts inspired by who he is. When her relationship with him is revealed to her parents eventually she knows that their interference will probably inspire her to develop issues about being with him. She strokes her thumb over his hand that she has intertwined with his, looks up at him and smiles a little and tells him, "That's okay. Just, if you ever do feel like you don't want to be with me for much longer, let me know so I'm not surprised when it ends."

"Deal," he swears. He doesn't want to have to tell her anything like that, but if she wants him to, if it would help to warn her when he inevitably screws this up, then he'll do it.

They lay in silence for a few minutes, thinking about everything that's happened, everything that's about to happen, and all of the complications they're facing.

Eventually, she worries aloud, "My parents are going to be so angry with me for breaking up with Finn."

"And really pissed when they find out you've replaced him with a Jew," Puck jokes.

She smiles, but her concerns are weighing far too heavy on her mind for it to reach her eyes right now. It would be so much easier if there was anything that would make her breaking up with him okay in their eyes. It would still get messy when they find out about her and Puck, but at least she'd have peace with them a little while longer.

Still not really serious and still trying to get her to feel better, Puck suggests, "Just tell your parents Finn's gay. He's in that homo-explosion club, they should buy it."

Quinn's eyes light up and she declares, "That's a good idea. Not the gay thing, but that Finn joined glee club and dragged me into it. It's hugely damaging to my popularity and his, and my parents only thought he was a good idea because he'd help my popularity. Now that being with him is hurting it, if I tell them about glee club, they'll probably insist I break up with him."

"You haven't told them you're in glee? Haven't you been there like three weeks?" Puck questions.

She shrugs, "I try to avoid talking to them about anything."

"Well, sounds like a good plan, worth a try," he offers.

"Yeah," she agrees a bit distantly. But this had been so good a few minutes ago before she started thinking, worrying. She determinedly blocks out her thoughts and concentrates on how good this is. She smiles up at him and tells him, "Even if it doesn't work and all of this gets more difficult, I think it's worth it."

" 'Course I am," he responds with smirk and wink.

She rolls from her side to her stomach and props her self up on her elbows as she narrows her eyes at him. She says, "You know, your sister was right, you're an egghead." She adds, still teasingly, "Especially with that horrible Mohawk."

She reaches out to touch it, but he swats her hand away playfully, "What? The Hawk is awesome."

"It's tacky and terrible," she counters.

"It's badass and hot," he returns. He warns, "There's no point trying to get me to ever get rid of it either. I'm keeping The Hawk until I go bald."

"Not if I shave it off in your sleep," she volleys.

He shrugs and resolves, "I'll just never sleep around you."

"So you don't want me to spend the night ever again?" she questions raising an eyebrow as she points out a hole in his logic.

"Spending the night doesn't have to include any sleeping. It hasn't tonight," he points out with a smile.

She rolls her eyes at him but smiles too. Stopping this ridiculous path their conversation has gone down, she says seriously, "We really should get some sleep though. You'll need to take me back out to my car in four hours because I have to go to church with my parents."

" 'Course you do Jesus Freak," he teases.

It's not much, but it's enough goading for her to take the bait and they start another mock argument until they simply start talking again. Unfortunately for Quinn who actually has things to do this Sunday, they don't end up getting any sleep.

(For all the things they say to each other, neither ever mentions the word love. Doing so doesn't even really cross their minds. For Quinn the word had become so meaningless- something she said to parents and boyfriends out of obligation. For Puck, he never really knew what it meant and he wasn't about to promise something he didn't even understand. And they've defined themselves as together and wanting to be together, but this inability of theirs to express actual feelings is still a complication for them- one of many.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn sits in church next to her parents Sunday morning with shoes on her feet that don't quite go with her outfit and she couldn't really care less. True, normally a white dress, short sleeved yellow cardigan and pale pink flats would have been a combination that perturbed her. But today all she could think about was the reason she had to rush just to get this slightly clashing outfit on. She was late. Well, more accurately, they got a little delayed trying to sneak Quinn out of Puck's apartment unseen and then once they were in the cherry orchard parked next to her car again, they got a little carried away saying goodbye and lost track of time.

She should probably feel guilty and awful, Quinn realizes. With all these crosses decorating the church, the minister up there reading from the Bible, all of these people surrounding her that would judge her for what she did last night- it should all make her feel bad about her choices. Instead, she feels good- comfortable and at ease.

As far as Quinn is concerned, her situation is like what the Apostle Paul once said, "Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God." She believes that God was the reason she crossed paths with Puck that day in Foster's. That He compelled her to offer to babysit Kelyn all of those times to keep Puck in her life so she could get to know him and discover that she should be with him. And last night/this morning she simply acted on what God had clearly told her. She cemented her fate to be with him, a fate provided to her by God.

So maybe everyone here (especially her parents) would call her a sinner for what she did last night, but honestly, Quinn's never felt less like one.

-o-o-o-

After Puck gets back from dropping Quinn at her car, he takes a nice long nap until his mom making lunch in the kitchen finally wakes him up. He's only half awake when he plops down in at the kitchen table so it takes him a while to catch up to anything going on around him.

Eventually though, Puck catches on to everything. His sister simply keeps talking about stuff- her dance class, girls in her dance class, her hatred of Sunday morning cartoons and Teen Nick, etc. His mom, though clearly listening to and participating in conversation with his sister, keeps looking at him weirdly though. It's not her "Were you just going to sleep through the entire day?" look or "I didn't hear you come home last night. How late were you?" look either. No, this is something different and knowing his mom she'd probably let him know what it's about as soon as his sister leaves the room.

Since his mom clearly has something to say to him, Puck gets up and heads back to his room before his mom gets the chance to talk to him. He takes a long shower to make sure his mom can't talk to him for a bit longer. He takes a little more care than usual getting dressed, knowing he'd see Quinn later, but mostly just to ensure his clothes are actually clean. He spends a while playing his guitar, waiting for his mom to just knock on his door and say whatever. When he realizes it's been an hour or so since he started playing and she hadn't shown up he starts to think he was wrong. His mom wasn't especially patient so he takes the fact that she hasn't come to him as a sign that everything is fine and he's all clear to stop avoiding her. On that note, he decides to go to the living room and commandeer the television.

As soon as he opens his door, takes a step out and sees his mom heading down the hall toward him, he starts to think he may have jumped the gun in his decision.

"Hey, I'm going to the grocery store later, anything you want?" she asks and he breathes a sigh of relief.

He lists off a bunch of junk food as usual, which she won't get for him as usual and he thinks all is cool and continues on his path to the living room.

"Noah," she calls after him.

Crap. He turns, waits.

She lowers her voice and informs him, "I know you had a girl here last night." She knew he was a teenaged boy and there wasn't any stopping him from doing things with willing girls no matter how many rules she had, but she wasn't going to allow just anything to happen under her own roof either- which, from their conversations about it, she thought he understood. "Look," she explains, "I thought we had an understanding that whatever you do when you're out, you don't…act that way in this house. I don't want a bunch of girls in and out of here for Kelyn to see, for her to be influenced by." He opens his mouth and she cuts him off, holding up a hand, "Kelyn didn't see or hear or know anything about this time. But I don't want her to ever so no more having random girls over here. Promise?"

Normally, he'd be okay with that. He didn't want random girls around his house either. He didn't like people being a part of his real life and the girls he usually hooked up with definitely weren't ones he wanted to let in. But the girl his mom was referring to was different and since things were different with her then his life was going to change. "Uhh," he stalls. What he wants to say to his mom, it feels weird to do. He's always been blunt with her whether she's liked it or not, but some how this feels like more than just honesty. He almost sighs, shoves his hands in his pockets and looks at the floor as he forces out, "I'm…sorry about having someone over last night while you guys were here. But…uh, she wasn't just some random girl and…she may be around a lot for a while."

He glances up and sees his mom's eyes wide with shock. She swallows thickly and manages to ask carefully, "Will there be other girls coming around too?"

"Nope," he says, glancing back down at the carpet for the syllable and then back up at his mom to await a reaction. He catches that her eyes seem teary before she's suddenly tightly hugging him. He hugs her back and when it feels like this is really dragging on he prompts, "Ma'?"

"Oh," she says letting him go. She smiles at him and says simply, "That's good to hear."

As she looks at him there, he's not sure he's ever felt better about himself. Last night (and probably even before that) Quinn looked at him like he was a good man and not a screw up. And now his mom was too. Maybe that meant that he wasn't destined to be like his father at all. Maybe he was actually good- well, as much as any badass could be.

He settles into watching TV actually feeling optimistic about his future for once.

-o-o-o-

Quinn considers waiting until dinner with her parents that night to start in on feeding them the scenario which will hopefully result in them insisting in her dumping Finn, but she can't wait. She has plans to sneak away and see Puck late this afternoon and she wants to get her parents support in breaking up with Finn and break up with him before she goes to see Puck so everything will be resolved and they can be together without a concern.

So Quinn brings it up at brunch. It's not ideal because Sunday brunch always follow Sunday church and therefore includes her parents talking about people who were there non-stop, which to say something, means she has to interrupt them. She waits until both parents have taken a bite of food at the same time and dives in quickly mentioning that she's having trouble making it to Cheerio's practices in the afternoons and may have to drop it all together because it conflicts with glee club. From there, she starts her whole spiel about Finn and having to join glee to save their relationship and how it's so damaging to their popularity- especially his. She embellishes and flat out lies for pieces of her story and her parents actually seemed to be rapt to her tale.

(What she says to them is the last thing of the day that goes as planned.)

They don't seem pleased, so Quinn wasn't at all expecting what her father says when her story is finished. He declares, "You're doing the right thing sweetheart."

"What?" she manages to question despite her shock.

"Well you're supporting your boyfriend, that's important," her mother commends.

She can't believe this, she points out, hoping to make it clearer and have them take it all back, "But the glee club is pathetic. They're never going to win anything and it will continue to drive down our popularity."

"Now that you're in it they'll surely win," Quinn's father compliments with a smile.

"And if you don't you can just drive Finn right back out of it so you don't lose your status," her mother suggests.

"He won't leave," she warns.

"That doesn't matter about your popularity. You don't have that much longer in high school anyway," her father begins and she can see her mother grow disgruntled at his comment about the lack of importance of what she built her life on. He continues, "What's more important is that you have a good guy. He's no genius, that's for sure, but he's a good boy who respects you, us, and our beliefs- and will probably easily be persuaded to join us in those beliefs. And you're not going to find anything better here in Lima. I hear a lot about the boys here and the ones at your school, you have very few options if any others at all."

"What if there was a guy better than Finn but he wasn't Christian or if he didn't have any faith? Hypothetically," Quinn asks before she can stop herself, because she sees it all beginning to slip away already.

Her father puts his knife and fork down, sets his elbows on the table, clasps his hands together, and squares his shoulders, "Well, like I said, I've only seen one boy around here that seems even slightly like a right choice for you. If you were to take up seeing anyone else- especially someone who did not and could not share this family's beliefs- that'd be an awful decision and I don't see any reason to support someone who makes bad decisions at all. That'd be like betting on a lame horse." He demands of her, "Is there some boy you like that's prompted you to be concerned about this?"

"No," she finds herself quickly denying. "I promise," she adds so they stop looking at her like that. It's a complete and total lie and it makes her feel awful to say, but they're looking at her like she's not their daughter and as much as there have been times that she hasn't wanted to be, she's never wanted them to not want her.

She excuses herself from brunch as soon as she thinks it won't be suspicious of her. Everything is falling apart. If she breaks up with Finn or starts dating Puck publically it seems like her parents will take drastic measures. They won't kick her out- they can't, she's their daughter. But she's pretty sure that by how scary and serious and cold her father looked he meant that he definitely wouldn't give her any money for college if she started making decisions he didn't like. She's an excellent student though, she could always get a scholarship. But it doesn't sound like he'd give her absolutely anything for the rest of her life if she does something he doesn't like- likely including supporting her financially until college and could she really have job and still keep up her grades and extracurriculars enough to get the scholarship she'll need? And when she does go off to college (if she makes it without anything from them) it sounds like they'd officially be out of her life forever, because they wouldn't have a daughter that makes such bad choices as they'd think a boy like Puck is.

If she dumps Finn or if she dates Puck and they know about either of those, it seems like she'd lose her family at some point. Was it worth the risk?

She spends the hours of the afternoon leading up to the time she's supposed to meet with Puck trying to come up with plans, trying to come up with anything that will allow her not to risk losing her family forever at sixteen.

-o-o-o-

When Quinn gets to Puck's door she texts him as planned.

The door quickly swings open and despite the turn her day took, she feels happier the second she sees him. Which promptly turns into a blur as he pulls her in and rambles, "My mom and sister are out- grocery store- but I don't know how much longer that's lasting." He says this as he shuts the door behind her and quickly leads her to his room as if he expects his family to pop up out of nowhere and catch them at any second.

Once they're in his room and he's hastily shut his door his paranoia seems to stop because he's grabbed her and is kissing her like he hasn't seen her in years.

She gives in and lets herself get lost in it for a few minutes. When he starts to take just one step, moving her with him in the direction of his bed, all the reasons she came here come flooding back to her mind and cause her to pull away and start in, "We need to talk."

"Oh," he says, face sinking. "That's supposed to be one of those bad phrases," he realizes, thinking of things he's heard about relationships.

"No," she denies, eyes downcast and hands brushing over his arms until they sink to their destination of his hands. While intertwining their finger she looks back up, regretful, and corrects, "Well, this is bad, but not because of us. It's my parents, they're…ruining everything."

He pulls her to him, closing the small space and hugging her. She thinks it's a nice gesture- mature and considerate. Until he opens his mouth and says, "Screw 'em."

She yanks away from him, eyes narrowing as she retorts, "No. They're my parents. They're my family. I can't just-"

"Hold up," Puck backtracks trying to get himself out of trouble, "Just tell me what's going on, forget about what I said, and tell me whatever you wanted to."

She sighs, this was already getting so difficult. She walks away from him, towards his window across the room, looking out it as she begins, "They don't care that Finn's in glee or that I'm in glee because of him or that it's wrecking havoc on our popularity. They actually thought I was doing the right thing by joining glee and supporting him."

"Okay," he responds slowly. He doesn't get what's so bad. Yeah, it would have made things better if they were supportive of her dumping Finn, but the fact that they're not doesn't change anything, right? Hadn't she said she wanted to be with him? "So they'll be pissed when you break up with Finn, they'll get over it," he says, careful to consider what he's including.

"No they won't," she says vehemently as she whirls around, "My grandmother remarried three months after my grandpa died and since my father didn't approve of the man or timing he didn't talk to her for the next twenty years. He didn't even go to her funeral or tell us about it- not that I had a reason to go since he never let me meet her." She stresses, "My parents do not forget and they certainly _don't _forgive."

That sucks that her parents are such ass-holes, but what Puck is really getting from this is something else. From what he gathered, he questions, "So you're not breaking up with Finn?"

"I can't," she cries, "I can't lose my family because I broke up with a high school boyfriend they wanted me to keep."

The feeling that is most familiar to him starts to bubble up, making him clench his fists and jaw. He's not going to give into it yet though, holding out hope that this isn't all turning shittastic yet. "What's going to happen with us then?" he asks tightly because he's angry she's gotten them into a situation where he has to ask and angry that he cares enough about this that he actually wants to ask the dignity-erasing question.

She spent the entire afternoon trying to come up with plans so she promptly starts listing them off, "I could try to get Finn to break up with me. If he dumps me, if he doesn't want me, my parents can't do anything about that. Then I just have to act like that depresses me so much I don't want to date for the rest of high school and we could be together secretly while I do." He starts shaking his head, eyes staring at the floor instead of at her and worry over him not liking that propels her into her next idea. She suggests, "Or we could just tell Finn the truth. He'll get hurt, but he's a good guy and he cares about both of us. I'm sure he'd agree to play my boyfriend on occasion for my parents while I'm really secretly with you." He's still shaking his head and she rushes on, "Or-"

"No," he interrupts, head back up and eyes on her again. "I can't tell Finn I've been with his girlfriend. He's my best friend and he'd never forgive me," he counters. He'd actually be willing to give that up if it wasn't for the other bits of her suggestions that were bothering him far more.

Before he can mention any of those she's diving into her last idea, "Then we don't tell him and I just keep dating him. I'll be with him in public for my parent's sake and I'll be with you in private."

"So you'd have two boyfriends? And what, you'd expect me to sneak around with you and not be with anyone else at the same time?" Puck questions, the thought of her continuing to date Finn and be with him, of having to share, finally forcing him to give into his anger.

"Of course I'd expect you to be faithful," Quinn answers, "it's not like I'd be with Finn because I want to be. He'd be a cover, nothing more. And if you supposedly only wanted to be with me then why does it matter that you wouldn't be able to see other girls in addition to me?"

"I do only want to be with you!" he exclaims. Frustrated, he continues to yell, "Which is why I don't want you to be with Finn. Why I don't want to have to continue to watch you play perfect, happy couple with him. Why I don't want to continue to have to hear every detail of your relationship from him and every thing you do together. Why I don't want to have to keep hearing him re-cap every time you make out with him or touch him." He'd walked over to her as he continued his tirade and now he's right in front of her, mere inches. And her face is crumbling in tears, but as he's sure he's not getting what he wants, he doesn't have any sympathy for that right now. He pleads, low and serious and with a hint of threat, "Break up with Finn."

She wants to. She wants to _so badly_. But her life has never really been about what she wants and this situation is no different. As much as she hates it, she doesn't see that there's any changing it either. "I can't," she laments, too tortured to notice the tears streaming down her face.

He sighs harshly and clenches his jaw. He takes a few seconds, but asks, "Remember when you asked me to warn you when I started to feel like me wanting to be with you was coming to an end?"

"Yeah," she answers, confused.

"This is your warning," he says, regretting that he's actually telling the truth, that he feels like this at all.

"So there's a few complications and you're ready to just give up? It's difficult so you don't want to be with me anymore?" she demands angrily.

"From where I'm standing this conversation hasn't been about me not wanting you, it's been about you not wanting me. You want to keep dating Finn and even if you aren't you still don't want to be with me and actually have anyone else know it. You only want to be with me if it's in secret," Puck returns.

"I never said no one can know we're together just not my parents or people that would tell them," she clarifies. Honestly, she did think they could just keep it between them so she scrambles to come up with something to say. She reasons, "We could tell your mom and Kelyn, they'd be safe. And my sister, I tell her almost everything- she probably wouldn't tell my parents. I have plenty of leverage over most of the Cheerios that they could know. And if Finn broke up with me and we pretended this started way after that, I think he'd be okay with knowing about us and not telling my parents too."

Okay, so a few people would know about them. He honestly didn't think he'd care about that since being in a relationship would mess with his image so he should want as few people as possible to know. But now that she was here advocating for keeping this just between them, it didn't feel like a good thing and the reasoning he'd figured was behind it felt even worse. "Or you could just forget all this crap and tell your parents," he suggests, hoping for a response that he didn't expect at this point.

"My parents will disown me," she tells him, terrified of the prospect even though it hasn't always sounded so bad. Faced with the possible idea of losing her family, she knows nothing is worth that.

"Why?" he commands, because if he's just some guy she'll date in high school then why does it matter so much to them?

"Because they think you'd be a bad decision and their daughter wouldn't make bad choices so if I do I won't be their daughter anymore," Quinn riddles off easily, the path having played in her head constantly since she learned of it at brunch.

Well if that's the case then the solution seems pretty easy to Puck (unless he's right about everything he's been think since she started talking about this stuff). "Then tell them I'm not a bad decision," he insists.

God, she's told him about her parents before why is she having to re-explain them now? Why was he fighting this? She already thought out all of their possible solutions and told them to him. They weren't ideal, but they weren't that bad. She's always had to compromise things or give them up to please her parents. Why couldn't he just compromise with her so they could be together? Her brows furrow, annoyed that he's not seeing this from her side, "They won't listen, or care."

He sighs, glances down at the floor. This was what he expected of her now. Ever since this conversation started he'd been getting this idea about what it was really all about and now there didn't seem to be any more denying it. If they were going to be together she didn't want other people to know. She refused to tell her parents about them or try and express to them that he wasn't some loser not good enough for their daughter. But if she thought this thing with them was going somewhere, shouldn't she be willing to do at least one of those things to try and make sure it lasted? He'd told his mom (kind of) and he fully intended not to hit on, flirt with, or be with any other girls. He was going to do what was necessary to be with her, but if she wasn't willing to do the same then it seemed pretty clear that the reason was because she didn't want him in the same way he wanted her, didn't think of him the same way he thought of her. And here he'd put himself out there, almost got trapped in this thing that surely seems like it would end up as a mistake (already was a mistake). He wasn't going to let himself get sucked further into this mistake though. No, it was time he turned the tables and took back some control, some dignity. "Why don't we just call this like it is? You don't want anyone to know if you're with me and you don't want to defend me to your parents because you don't think this is worth the trouble, that I'm worth the trouble." He doesn't wait to see if she corrects him, he forges on (like an idiot- he'll think later), "Which is okay, cause all this trouble, you're not worth it either."

"That's what you think?" she asks, voice thick with tears despite trying to ask the question evenly.

He shakes his head a little and resigns, "It's just the truth."

"If you think that's the truth then you really are as much of an idiot as everyone thinks," she retorts instinctively. This isn't what she wanted; this anger, this destruction. But if he can just walk away from them, from her at the first complication then she must have been wrong about what she wanted and all of this was her biggest mistake.

"Shouldn't you be running along to Finn now just like mommy and daddy want?" he returns venomously.

She shakes her head, tries to reign in her tears, and says coolly, "I should have known you were nothing more than a cowardly bastard."

Enraged, he verbally assaults, "And I should have known with you going after me while you were with Finn that you were just another cheating whore."

She slaps him hard without giving the action a second of thought. She's never struck anyone. She's never needed to and never thought she would. But she's never been more hurt by someone or more furious with someone in her life and it doesn't feel like a mistake to take a violent action like this in this moment.

Once he's looking at her again, holding his cheek, she warns him lowly, "Never speak to me again."

She hurries around him and flees the apartment without looking back.

He doesn't even consider chasing after her or apologizing. As far as he's concerned it's her being her and his momentary stupidity ignoring that that's gotten them here. But here, not together and never going to be, is exactly where they should be.

(It's both of their faults that they ended like this. They both let who they were get in the way of who they wanted to be and who they wanted to be with. She feared her parents too much to relinquish any control over the situation they put her in so she could possibly let him in and let him help. He doubted himself too much not to take the first opportunity that came up where it was even slightly possible for her actions to be motivated out of thinking less of him as a sign to bail on this and be the person everyone expected- he expected- before he got too far into it. And in being too stubborn and too proud and too afraid to let themselves have what they want, they're really just cheating their own hearts---again.)

-o-o-o-

Puck spends five minutes in his room after Quinn runs out and everything ends before he can't stand it anymore. (He'd been so happy in this room earlier, with her. Now it just felt like a lie.)

He grabs his keys intent on going to 7-11 and trying to get people to buy him any alcohol they would. He almost barrels right through is mother and his sister returning from the store on his way out.

"Heading out?" his mother asks, naturally curious as to where he's going on a Sunday evening.

"Yep." He stops a step outside the door, thinking of the last time he saw his mom and what he said to her then. He calls after her, "Hey mom." She pokes her head back around the open door and he says, tone hard, "Forget about what I said earlier. That's not happening."

He sees the concern cross her face, but he can't take that right now so he heads down the hall as fast as his feet will carry him.

-o-o-o-

Quinn sits stoically through dinner with her parents. (They don't notice.)

She spends the rest of the night crying in her room. (They don't notice that either.)

In the morning she'll tell herself that the weekend didn't happen. All she did this weekend was go to a dinner with her parents at their country club, go to church, and do homework. (She absolutely _didn't_ think she had found something special with a boy with a Mohawk and lose her virginity to him.) And in the morning she'll pretend she never felt anything for any boy other than Finn.

For tonight though, she cries. She gave her heart and body to someone and apparently he didn't want her that much and she got her heart broken. She can't believe she actually thought he thought of her differently than other girls. Everything she thought she saw in him, between them, must have been a complete and utter lie. She vows to never be so stupid or naïve again.

-o-o-o-

Puck hooks up with Santana at school on Monday. Seeking her out is the first thing he does.

(Thought of Saturday night had tortured him in his sleep Sunday night and he figured this was the way to get rid of such thoughts.)

He suggests to Santana that since they like having sex with each other they should just make it a regular thing to save themselves of having to find someone else willing. She's game to give it a try. She breaks the deal off by the end of the week though. She tells him it's about his credit score or something, but he knows it's because he started trying to make out with her in the halls and she wasn't a fan of such things that made her seem unavailable to other people.

(He wasn't a fan of things that made him seem taken to other girls either usually. But it seemed like every time he walked down a hall lately he saw Quinn kissing Finn, so he had to do something).

Next (to try and forget that he ever felt anything for Quinn) he starts going after moms and married ladies. It's an easier deal than being with Santana. (But it still doesn't make him feel any less hurt or miserable or angry.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn throws herself into her relationship with Finn. She tries to like him more. She tries to be more dotting and dedicated.

She throws herself into glee tasks and taking down glee for Coach Sylvester. She tries to let thoughts of strictly these objectives fill her mind.

(It doesn't work- especially since Puck so quickly moved on to her best frenemy.)

She puts off the next abstinence club meeting, because despite her denial and pretending, she can't force herself to go through with it.

Everything comes back to Finn for her. She wants to fill her time with other things, keep her mind from straying. And she has honors classes, Cheerios, glee, sabotage, and lots of other things to fill her mind. But she keeps coming back to trying to be better for Finn. She feels even more guilty for everything she did every moment she's not dedicating herself to him.

After a couple of weeks, she starts to think that she could feel better, feel more committed to Finn, if she let him get a bit further with her. So they make out and she resolves not to tell him to stop nearly as soon as she normally would. But then his hands travel to areas that she's never let them before, intimate places that were last touched by someone else and that someone else, those moments with him, flash in her mind and make her feel so violently sick to her stomach that she has to push Finn away and flee to the bathroom to empty the contents of her stomach.

She never tries to let him get further again.

-o-o-o-

They don't speak to each other.

They barely look at each other.

They never meet the other's eyes.

Despite being in the same social circle, it's actually really easy to get away with never saying anything to each other. He makes sure that any time he hangs out with Finn it'll just be the two of them (he feels guilty every minute he spends with him though, hates himself a little more each minute too). She makes sure most of the time she spends with Finn is likewise alone. And whenever they actually have to be around each other, they use anyone of the many other people usually around as distractions and excuses never to be too close to each other.

The barely looking at each other can only take place when they know where the other is. Unfortunately for them both that means catching sight of each other unexpectedly (painfully).

They can't meet each other's eyes. Neither can face the truth or mistakes that may be lingering there. And since they can't, neither finds out that the other is faced with the same inability.

They manage all of this avoidance for five weeks, until fate forces them back together again. (And fate is taking a crueler tact this time.)

(Here's something you should know: They hate each other for what the other made them feel but they believe didn't feel in return. They hate themselves for ever feeling anything for the other, which makes them hate each other more for inspiring them to hate themselves. And for as much as they only want to hate each other right now, it's not the only thing the feel for each other- the other is just impossible to admit for now.)

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**A/N: I hope you enjoyed reading! **

Please do **REVIEW** as all of you who did so last time made my world substantially more gleeful (pun not intended).

**Next chapter title: **_I'm gasping for the air to fill my lungs with everything I've lost _from Snow Patrol's "It's Beginning To Get To Me."

In case anyone is wondering or slightly lost, we are definitely getting more into Glee territory now with topics from "Preggers" and following episodes (likely all the way through "Wheels") being addressed in the next chapter.

I hope all of you readers have a great week!


	8. Chapter 6

**A/N: **Hello wonderful people reading this story:) It's been a little over a month since I updated and I'm very sorry about that. I had a lengthy one-shot I just had to write in between writing this chapter. But on the bright side this is quite a long chapter and the next looks like it will be even longer.

Before getting into the chapter I must say **thank you again** to everyone who reviewed! I have no authority to declare this, but those of you reading and reviewing are the most awesome people ever! Seriously. You guys are the best:)

Back to the chapter, this one covers a bit before "Preggers" through "Mash-up." I know, I said it would likely cover though "Wheels" and I had wanted it to just so it could end on a happier note, but the content of "Wheels" really just didn't fit the tone of the chapter.

Speaking of the tone, you'll probably notice the chapter is lacking in dialogue. That was a conscious decision. Quinn (especially) and Puck both seemed quite alone through these parts and one can't exactly have dialogue alone (unless you're like me and occasionally talk to yourself).

Also, an anonymous reviewer, Gleekster, asked how could a guy tease a girl? I honestly can't come up with a response. Sorry. I'm pretty sure I've never even heard the two words "guy" and "tease" combined like that. However, if anyone else knows, she sounded quite desperate for an answer (forgive me Gleekster if you're not a she) so please include a response in a review if you have one for Gleekster.

Okay, finally, on to the chapter. I hope you enjoy reading!

* * *

**Cheated Hearts

* * *

**

_**VI. I'm gasping for the air to fill my lungs with everything I've lost**_

(Here's something you should know: The world starts falling apart on her and suddenly she has to start fighting to keep the things in her life that she never really wanted there in the first place. But everything is disappearing and she doesn't have anything else left to hang on to and clinging to the wrong things is better than clinging to nothing.)

Quinn's thought about what she wanted in the future a lot.

She wanted to go away to college. Somewhere far from Lima that didn't resemble Ohio or anyone she knew here at all. She wanted to find a major in college that she was passionate about that would lead to a career that she loved and was fantastic at. She wanted to meet a good guy in college. He wouldn't be her parent's idea of perfect. He'd be smart and kind and romantic and spontaneous. He'd look at her like she was his world and she'd feel the same about him. They'd see the world together before settling down. They'd have three kids, at least one dog, and their home would be filled with laughter and warmth. They'd be so ridiculously happy that this life she had in Lima, in high school, would feel like it never even existed.

That brief time when she was sneaking around to kiss a boy with a Mohawk she didn't think about that frequently dreamed about future. Thinking about the future then got complicated and it didn't need to be, not if she didn't think about it.

Then there was an even shorter time when she was more than just sneaking around with a boy with a Mohawk. She was with him. Really with him. And she didn't think about the future then either. She didn't need to. The present was better than she could imagine any time ever being and she didn't need the escape of some happier dreamed-up future. Right then, with him, she was genuinely happy and she didn't need to think past that.

When she realizes she's late, she sees it all slipping away.

She's not that worried about it the first day she's late. She'd never been irregular, but she remembers her freshman health class and how her rather butch looking female teacher mentioned teenaged girls being prone to irregularity.

When she's late a second day she considers that maybe in all of her attempts to remain perpetually distracted, she miscalculated. (She counts the days seven more times, and it always equals that she's two days late.)

When she's three days late she considers that maybe her percentage of body fat is finally low enough that she won't have a regular period anymore. She remembers hearing that at around six percent body fat that would be the effect and given the fact that she's in flawless shape for cheer it seems reasonable that she'd have very low body fat.

When she's four days late, she still tries to convince herself that it's a result of lacking body fat or just becoming irregular.

(But really, it had been there in the back of her mind from the second she realized she was late. She could be pregnant. She'd had sex and there was stupidly no use of contraception. And even if the chances seem slim because it was only one time, it's a possibility taunting her mind all the same.)

When she's five days late, her concern can't stay at the back of her mind anymore.

It's a Friday night and she tells Finn she doesn't feel well and can't go out (it's not far from the truth- she really does feel ill at the prospect of what may be going on with her). She spends a couple of hours in her room, pacing and praying that her period will finally come.

She considers who she can talk to about this. Her mother is definitely out. Just like she was told five weeks ago, if her parents found out she made decisions they didn't like, she'd be on her own (though isn't she sort of already?). Any fellow Cheerio is out. She know Santana has had a pregnancy scare or two and that the girl does actually have a heart (even if it's small), but she can't trust her with this.

Quinn's sister, Jessica, would have been a good option, her only option. But things weren't the same with her any more. It started after…_that_ night, she'd call her sister, and pretended with her just as much as she did with everyone else. A couple of weeks ago, her sister called her on it- said their conversations sounded rehearsed on Quinn's part. And she wasn't going to talk about _that_ night because she simply _couldn't_, but she approached the general topic. She had asked her sister if she was happy being the person their parents wanted her to be. Her sister said of course she was. She asked what her sister thought would happen if she wanted to be someone else. And her sister responded bluntly that she'd be out of the family and why would she want to be anyone else anyway? They were better as is than most people could ever hope to be and as long as they kept their parents happy, once they died, they'd get enough money from them to do anything they want. Quinn never felt like she knew her sister less. She had thought they were close, similar, but maybe that was just another thing she had fooled herself into believing.

So after spending all Friday night trying to come up with someone she could talk to about what maybe happening to her, Quinn realized that she didn't have anyone.

When her period still hadn't come on Saturday, she spent the day deciding the best course of action. She researched online and made an appointment with free clinic in Beaverdam on Monday after school and cheer practice. But she couldn't wait until Monday to have a hint at her fate so she developed a quicker course of action too.

Saturday night, just past midnight after she's confirmed her parents are sleeping soundly, she sneaks out of the house. She drives to Findlay, to Walmart, and buys a pregnancy test. She wears a hoodie with the hood up, sunglasses, and she puts her nicest ring on her left ring finger in hopes of making herself look less pitiful.

The clerk that rings up her item raises an eyebrow at her, but thankfully doesn't say anything more than the total.

She doesn't want to do this in a public bathroom. If she's going to have to go through this experience she'd much rather be in the comfort of her own home. But home isn't a realistic option. There are too many risks, too many "what if's" involved there. So she ducks into the bathroom at Walmart rather than leaving and takes the test.

Instead of hiding the test from herself until the appropriate amount of time had passed, she watches it until the horrid little plus sign appears. She's immediately glad that she happened to pick up a pregnancy test that was sold in a two pack (as many were she learned while browsing the aisle) because she couldn't just accept those results. They had to be wrong. So she takes the second test and stares at it until the same plus sign appears.

She lets out a harsh sob at the confirmation, not realizing that she had already been crying. She sinks to the ground (not even noticing that it was filthy), because the news makes her legs feel unstable.

She can't be pregnant. She can't be pregnant. She can't be pregnant. She can't. She can't. _She can't_.

A hundred worried thoughts race through her mind:

She's only sixteen.

She only had sex once and she already regretted it now, why did she need to be punished like this?

She's only sixteen.

She may not be a great person, but she has faith in God and His justice and shouldn't He know that she doesn't deserve this?

She's only sixteen.

Her parents are going to kill her.

She's going to have a baby. A real little person that is made from her, that will grow within her.

She rushes to the closest toilet at that thought, emptying her stomach into it.

When she's done, she sinks back to the ground.

She knows she doesn't have to have a baby. Abortions are fairly common. Women do it all the time. She could get rid of the baby and no one would ever know.

She doesn't have anything left to throw up, but the idea prompts intense dry heaves, making her feel sick to her stomach again.

She knows she can't do it. She can't be pregnant at sixteen. She can't have a baby. But she can't kill it either.

So it's official. She's sixteen and within a few months of turning seventeen, she's going to have a baby.

She takes a few deep breaths and tries to gain control over herself. She's on a disgusting bathroom floor and she has her answer, she's pregnant, so there's no reason to be here anymore. She can go home and she probably should since her condition means that she won't be able to for very much longer.

She manages to keep control of her emotions and ignore the news for the trip home because she knows it would be dangerous to drive and cry and she needs to get home in one piece for more than just herself now.

She makes it all the way back up to her room before she lets the violent sobs start again. She cries until she can't anymore, she doesn't sleep, and when her parents knock on her door in the morning wondering why she isn't ready for church she tells them she has a stomach flu and won't be going (the fact that thinking about the fact that she's pregnant while she looks at them causes her to rush to the bathroom for more dry heaves really sells the idea she's sick).

Once her parents leave for church Quinn heads down stairs and fixes herself something to eat. She doesn't feel like eating at all. But while she was dry heaving in front of her parents she realized that through the many times she's felt like throwing up since learning she's pregnant, she hasn't been able to. Her stomach is completely empty and while she doesn't really care what that means for her, she knows that given her condition she has to eat something.

After she does she crawls back into bed, thinking tortured thoughts. She drifts off to sleep from sheer exhaustion eventually. When she wakes up, the realization of the previous night hits her instantly not leaving her a moment of blissful ignorance. But she doesn't cry now. She still certainly feels like doing so, but she knows she needs to start thinking about what she's going to do.

It's Puck's baby too. She spends hours ruminating on that thought. She thinks of what she felt for him (or thought she had), what he didn't feel for her, all of the mistakes between them. She's having a baby with him though and she wants to believe that everything bad between them was just…a mistake and he was as good of a person as she had once believed. But no, she's having a baby and she can't be that reckless. She has to be careful here. She can't be stupid or naïve as she had been in the past. She couldn't make decisions based on beliefs. She had to make them based on facts and the facts were that right after she slept with him and things got a little bit difficult he bailed and broke her heart. The facts were that he had been with so many girls since her that she lost count. And whether it ends up being just in name or something more, all of those facts make her think that Puck shouldn't have the option of being the baby's father- his actions have proven that he doesn't deserve it.

(She has rational reasons for not wanting Puck to be the father, but really, her biggest one is that what happened between them still hurts so much that she really doesn't think she'd survive the baby being his.)

Of course if the baby isn't Puck's, who's is it going to be? She's never been with anyone else and who would want to pretend to be the father if they never at least got to have sex with her out of it? A lot of high school guys were stupid, but they weren't that stupid to take on fatherhood in exchange for absolutely nothing.

It's two days later at school that Quinn finds her answer.

Finn seeks her out in the halls. He says something has been up with her and he doesn't know what he did, but he wants to fix it.

In the past few days it had never crossed her mind to drag him into this. But she's been in this distant, miserable bubble around everyone she knows for three days and he's the first person to notice. Even more than that he's actually concerned about her. And while she thought she didn't have anyone to talk to about any of this, she realizes now that she had him.

From there the truth and the story is slipping out of her lips without even thinking about it. She's sucking him into this and making her problem his, but in this moment she's just trying to keep the only person who cares about her by her side because she knows that by the time this is over she won't have anyone (him either- because this lie won't last forever and she know she shouldn't let it as soon as she says it.)

She has a partner in this now and it feels so good to have someone hold her while she cries and say (even though he clearly doesn't believe it) that it will be okay, that she doesn't feel bad about her lie in that moment. She needs this. She can't do it on her own and she doesn't want to.

-o-o-o-

"Quinn's pregnant. She's keeping the baby." That was how Puck heard she was pregnant with his kid; stoically from his best friend who pretty clearly thought it was his (which was instantly confusing because he knew their relationship hadn't gone that far…or he was pretty sure).

He knew something was up with Finn, but honestly he was hoping that it was this whole football-team-learning-to-dance-like-Beyonce thing and he'd join him on the side that was totally against them doing this. What was bugging Finn having anything to do with Quinn wasn't something he'd expected at all. Honestly, if he thought Finn would mention Quinn, that the problem could have been with her, he wouldn't have asked. It didn't matter that Finn was his best friend, if he was going to talk about Quinn, Puck did everything possible not to hear it (even when it meant being a bad friend to Finn).

It takes him quite a few minutes to realize he hasn't moved from his spot in the hallway where Finn told him. Finn's nowhere in sight now, must have just continued to leave as the news got stuck in Puck's mind. He couldn't comprehend it at first. It was just so thoroughly shocking.

Then he comes back to himself suddenly and realizes his heart's pounding, he's sweating, and his breathing has gotten shallow. A queasiness settles over him (that won't leave him alone for months). He tries to control it all, tries to calm down.

He doesn't know what to think of all of this. But when the simple fact that he got a girl pregnant passes through his mind he punches the nearest locker. He's been resolved to the fact that he's a fuck up for a long time, but being one was never supposed to affect anyone else. At that thought, he takes another full-force swing at the locker.

He hits the locker again and again until his hand is bloody and his knuckles feel broken. (Until the pain in his hand is distracting enough that he doesn't notice that he's started to cry or that he's terrified.)

Eventually, he sinks down to the floor in defeat, conceding victory to the locker. It takes him a few minutes of being on the floor, noticing that his face is wet and feeling his hand drip blood, before he realizes that he's probably lucky that no one has shown up in the hall and found him in this pathetic state. When he finally stands up a minute later, he decides to man up as well.

He heads home and his mind is still completely messed up thanks to the new knowledge, but there's a girl out there having his baby and he refuses to act like a little wuss in the face of that (despite the terror that settles in the pit of his stomach and takes up permanent residence there).

Well, it's Quinn and… if he's being honest, which it feels about time to do given the circumstance, he knows that despite everything that happened between them every time he sees her with Finn it still sucks ass. He knows that means something, but figuring that out gets interrupted by getting home and realizing he's got to sneak into the bathroom to clean up his hand before his mom or sister notice and get all concerned.

When he's done trying to make himself appear normal so he can see them (and came up with an excuse about his hand getting hurt at practice- hence the wrap covering it) he eats dinner with his family. He tries to stay in the little conversation they have as they eat, but eating with them makes him think about family. Family was important to him, because no way no how was he becoming a douche like his dad who family didn't matter to. And thinking about family, what it means, he remembers what his best friend told him, the way he told him and how it seemed like Quinn didn't have any intention of ever being a family with him. Given that she clearly told Finn the baby was his, it would be impossible that they could be.

At that thought, he gets so angry that he has to leave the company of his family, shut himself in his room and toss everything around that wouldn't make a sound (he didn't want anyone getting suspicious). Yeah, things ended really badly between them, but how could she not tell him that she's having his kid? He's not his dad, he's not a bad person, how could she not know that? Although, thinking back on how they did end, it didn't really seem like she knew him then and maybe that was why she clearly didn't seem to know him now.

But still, she's having his baby. _His_ baby. And despite all of the bad feelings between them he never thought she'd be this dishonest with him.

Well, he knows the truth now so screw what she wants (clearly Finn as the father), he figures. The baby is his so he's confronting her about it and he's letting her know that she should have told him, because he's not walking away from this like some deadbeat loser.

-o-o-o-

Quinn had thought things were bad when she learned the truth on Saturday, when she felt alone for days afterward, when she realized the lie she told Finn on Tuesday would ensure their end and she'd lose his friendship. But Thursday, everything gets worse.

Despite still being super pissed about the fact that she didn't tell him the truth, when Puck approaches Quinn at school, he's not sure why he says, " 'Sup MILF?" Sure, starting an interaction with name-calling had once kind of been their thing, but he didn't mean to be that mean in this moment, not when he was trying to prove that she should have told him the truth.

Quinn never thought someone saying "MILF" would leave her so terrified. She should have known it wouldn't take long for Finn to tell Puck and for Puck to figure out the truth. But she was so relieved to have someone to talk to about all of this she hadn't thought about Puck and what she'd say to him when he found out. So she tells him to leave her alone and hopes that he obeys. Though it was worth a shot, she knew he'd be too stubborn for that so as he speaks she tries to simply stay silent, ignore him.

Then Puck gets a little cocky, claiming she didn't sleep with her own boyfriend, and well maybe this is an angle she can work with. Rub in that he wasn't her one and only and maybe trick him into believing that he really isn't the father.

Puck continues to make his argument rationally. He honestly isn't that used to relying on logic, but he points out that if Finn finally lost his virginity (whether to her or someone else) there's no way his boy wouldn't tell him.

She tries to hit him where it could hurt, so to speak, but her jab about him sleeping with his best friend's girls is weak and cheap. So she tries to hurry off only to have Puck mention the words "immaculate conception" in a yell around her. (What? He knows way more about religion than he appears to.)

So she drags him in the nearest empty classroom and decides to make some things clear. (It's the first time she's touched him since the day it all ended and though she's successful at not letting it affect her at the moment, it'll be one of the things she cries about later.)

He tells her what he intended. He'd take care of it, and her (because dammit, he still feels…), and he's not his dad.

She gets the significance of him mentioning his dad and what he's saying to her here, but for better or worse her decisions have already been made. She already had Finn thinking he was the father and she already decided that Puck was too unreliable to be let in on this. So she makes an attempt at another low blow, using something he told her during one of those times they spent time alone together, actually being open with each other, against him. When he retorts with the mention of his pool cleaning business, she uses one of the many facts she thought of as support not to tell him ("we live in Ohio").

He's run out of retorts for a second so she jumps on the opportunity. He broke her heart and got her pregnant and she can't even depend on him to help deal with any of it. So she needs to separate herself from what they were.

"I had sex with you because you got me drunk on wine coolers and I felt fat that day. It was a mistake. You're a Lima loser and you're always going to be a Lima loser."

There it is. Resolve. She says it firmly, meeting his eyes. She created a reason for what happened between them that was enough of the truth that maybe he'd buy it. Any pathetic feelings he may have assumed she had had for him (still had), she squashed that idea for him hopefully right there. And she let him know how things would be between them, because there was nothing between them before and would be nothing ever- that was the message she hoped got across to him.

And then, she ran. And as she ran, she began to cry.

Because that wasn't the reason she slept with him. And it didn't feel like a mistake, not right away. And she did have (still had) feelings for him. And that wasn't how things were between them, and this coldness wasn't what she wanted for them (not even after everything that had happened before).

School is important to her so she's never ditched before, but she had run straight to her car. She's sixteen, pregnant, and the father of her baby just found out about it, and she just had to pretend that they were never anything because she couldn't let him get involved and end up getting so hurt again. So this feels like a really appropriate occasion for skipping classes.

She hurries into her car through the rain and attempts to cry the pain she's in out.

But then there's a Crazy Lady in her car.

Terri Schuester it turns out. Things get progressively weird with mentions of a fake pregnancy, giving her baby away to Mr. Schue and this crazy lady so she can pass it off as her own. It's insane, but she actually appreciates it because as she worries about the woman with crazy-eyes in her car who wants her baby, she doesn't think about what she just did, not for now.

-o-o-o-

Puck didn't think things went well with Quinn. In fact, they went worse than he would have expected.

He knew what they talked about after they had sex (thought about it practically every damn night, stupid memory). But with the explanation she gave him for why she slept with him, maybe he never really knew her. There had been that afternoon when she was actually suggesting dating Finn and him at the same time, the fact that she didn't tell him about his baby, both of which seemed like real good support of the fact that he never knew her.

He saw the way she ran though too. And it took him a quite a few seconds, but he did run after her and he stood in the doorway she used to dash out into the parking lot, into the rain, and saw her crying in her car. Maybe these times that he remembered when she didn't fit the person he thought she was, were just flukes. Stupid things she had done, regrets. He knew a lot about regrets, saying and doing things you didn't mean because you just couldn't be any differently for that moment. Maybe that was what messed them up. Playing that fight that ended them over again in his head, he knows he said some things that he didn't actually believe. So maybe everything he had initially believed about her, about them, was true and they had just gotten messed up along the way.

But they're having a baby together now and he can't just let things stay messy. And he can't back off and leave her alone, let them be nothing like she seems to want.

He doesn't know what he's going to do, but Puck knows he's got to start doing something.

-o-o-o-

Quinn tries to go about her life as normally as possible. First, because she doesn't need people getting suspicious about her and possibly stumbling into the truth. Second, she knows she'll only be able to pretend she's not in the situation she is for so long and so she should take advantage of these last few weeks she has where she can actually still seem like a normal teenager, before she becomes a statistic, cliché, and outcast.

Ignoring her reality and pretending manages to last fairly well through most of Friday. Then, just before the game, Finn brings up "their" situation. Though she had been hoping to make it through the whole day in her make-believe state, what Finn tells her is actually pretty sweet. He knows that if he's really going to take care of her and "their" baby, he needs to start being better. He'll need to be as good at something as she is at cheer so he told Mr. Schue "their" situation, kind of cried to him about it (he admitted adorably sheepishly), and he doesn't know if it will work at all, but he's going to try and make the football team better so maybe he could get a scholarship. He knows he'll need a good education if he's going to have a family and he wants any money he has to go to the baby, not spend it on himself, on school.

Then, she watches as the football team wins their first game of this team's history, and she knows its Finn's doing. What they did was because he got his teammates to do it and he did that for her, for the baby she was having that he thought was his. And she thinks, she does actually love him. He's just so _good_. What other guy would start changing his life and trying to provide for a family only days after learning that the girlfriend he never even got to have sex with was pregnant? And it's not a romantic love she feels for him, though she kisses him after he wins for her, but it's whole and affectionate and real all the same. He's cared about her more than most people in her life ever have, and she can't help but love him for that.

-o-o-o-

Puck hadn't gotten why Finn had been so concerned with winning lately. Sure it sucked that they sucked and he hated losing, but they never won football games, he'd a thought Finn would have accepted that by now- it seemed like he had last week.

Then, when Finn is talking about doing the dance and he mentions being a Lima loser, he thinks of Quinn. (He even glances at her, dammit, thought he had that under control.) And he gets Finn's new found determination now. The guy thinks he's going to be a dad and he doesn't want to be a loser of one. He doesn't want to be a loser either. He thought he'd never actually agree to doing that stupid Beyonce dance, but if there was a chance that it would in any way help make him look less like he was doomed to be a failure, then anything was worth that.

Then some dumbass from the other team makes some dumb comment and it's really on. Yeah, he already took that guy down a peg with his comeback, but as he turns back to Finn and agrees to go ahead with this humiliating idea, he really hopes he gets to pummel the crap out that guy.

And then he scores, Gay Kid makes a field goal, and they win. He feels really good… for about two seconds until he sees Quinn kissing Finn. He turns and walks away from it, because he knows all too well what it feels like to see them together like that.

He spends most of the weekend thinking of that moment. He proved he could be a winner, but it seemed pretty unlikely that she even noticed, all wrapped up in Finn as she so often seemed to be. And he knows that his actions at the football game were because of her and not just because she was having his baby. If he's being honest, when he thinks about it, the majority of the actions he's taken for months and months now have been in some way thanks to her.

It takes him nearly the entire weekend to come around to it, but he knows that he feels completely differently about her than he has any other girl. Yeah, he was pretty sure of that back when they were…almost something, but despite all of the girls he tried to make replace her, he still really wants her.

Which brings him to two stupid acts of Monday morning. The first is that he goes right up to Quinn with Finn and says ass-like stuff in hopes of outing the truth. She barely looks at him for the entire time he's standing in front of her though, which makes it pretty clear he took completely the wrong tact here. Because really, what was the point of getting the truth to come out if she was just going to hate him?

Which brings him to his second unfortunate act of Monday morning- deciding to join glee club. He's surprised when he sees Matt and Mike heading that way too, but it's cool that they do because he realizes it makes him look a helluva lot less obvious. (And that's where he missed his first sign that he should have thought this through more.) He's cool with Mr. Schue since he joined his Acafella group- he had needed mom's to take his mind off Quinn and he had talent coming out of his ass so he had figured why not? But joining the school glee club was different and despite the fact that they were cool, Mr. Schue did raise an eyebrow at him when he declared he wanted to be in glee. Luckily, Matt and Mike being there and wanting to join too seemed to make Mr. Schue a little less surprised because he was too happy about finally having a full team.

He expects Quinn to be shocked when he comes through the door at their first rehearsal, everyone else certainly is, but the girl masks damn well and appears indifferent. He's here to stay though, and he's going to make sure she ends up wanting him here instead of seeming to not care.

-o-o-o-

It takes twelve days after she realizes she's pregnant for the morning sickness to really kick in. Of course she's been throwing up a bit, but now it's much more in quantity and regularity. Her second Wednesday at school knowing she's pregnant she up-chucks seven times (one for every class period plus lunch!), which can't possibly be normal. How would a fetus survive if she can't keep any nutrients down thanks to the constant vomiting? So she calls the doctor that confirmed her condition at the clinic in Beaverdam (it was a little redundant to go given the two positive pregnancy tests, but she needed to hear it from someone else- and she supposes she needed to make sure it was okay too). The doctor tells her that everything is normal, don't worry about it. But she is literally wasting away here. Seriously, her mother even complimented her on how much more "fit" she's looking. So this can't be right, it doesn't feel right.

Basically, she's starting to freak out a little. She feels like she's losing her mind. It takes several deep breaths, but she achieves a moment of calmness (it only lasts two minutes), which allows her to think rationally. She decides that if her doctor doesn't seem concerned, then she'll just try and eat foods with high fat contents in hopes that her body (and therefore the baby) absorbs some of them and therefore her constant throwing up doesn't result in a malnourished baby. This is what leads to her having Finn get her ice cream quite frequently over the next couple of weeks. She tries to explain her rational to him, but he seems preoccupied and doesn't understand. He does always get her whatever she asks for though.

Then, just after that boozy old lady showed up to join glee, she makes the mistake of eating one of her high fat content foods at home. In her defense, she thought she had the house to herself. Apparently her mom had been on the balcony of the master suit "meditating" (sneaking some cigarettes). So her mother waltzes into the kitchen and catches her red-handed, eating a cheeseburger. Naturally, given the fact that her mother is, well, her mother, she exclaims, "Quinny what are you doing? You were looking so much better, why are you ruining that?"

She blows off her mother with some made up answer of a new diet or new shake from Coach Sylvester that will get rid of it or something. Really, she's thinking about how sometimes she thinks she may actually hate her mother. She doesn't want to, truly. But God, the woman just makes it so difficult not to. She's never going to be like that to her daughter.

Wait.

Where did that come from? Sure she'd thought about her future kids before, particularly in moments like this, but now one of those future kids is actually in her and will be here soon. She places her hand on her abdomen, considers for a second, before it goes flying away. She's not ready for this. She can't think about the future, about what she's going to do with her baby, not yet. She's just_ can't_.

And she begins to cry right there in her kitchen because she's not ready for any of this and she's so scared. Part of her is relieved her mother left the room, but part of her wishes she'd come back, find out the truth and then contrary to her personality actually be there for her. Because she needs someone to tell her what to do. She can't do this.

But the truth is that if her mother finds out the truth there won't likely be a personality one eighty. Her mother would just ignore it or hate her and she's not ready for either of those two things to happen either. So she tries to control herself. She's known since this started that crying at home is dangerous- that's why she ends up doing so much of it at school. She gathers herself, heads to the safety of her room, and tries to forget about all of the things sure to come that she's not in the least ready for.

-o-o-o-

Being a part of glee club isn't nearly as easy as Puck thought. First of all there was the whole drama with super-annoying-chick Rachel quitting. He didn't think that'd be a bad thing, but it turns out they really need her cause she's way more talented than the rest of them (not that he hasn't had to literally force himself to tear his eyes away from Quinn when she's singing). Then there was the cougar friend of Mr. Schue's joining the club. He's been with a lot of older ladies and as far as they go this one rates pretty high on his list of do-able older ladies. So when she checks him out immediately he gives her a little eyebrow raise (and a finger gun- like a douche), she's hot so it's just habit.

As much as all of the team member drama is surprisingly getting to him a bit, there's a lot more that's been surprising him since he joined. He thought he'd join, do whatever they want him to, and just get Quinn somehow. But actually he joined, the glee kids are being standoffish and nice at the same time (which is bothersome despite the fact that he didn't expect them to care), and he's become unsure if he should be trying to figure out a way to get Quinn.

The thing about being around her more is that he keeps seeing her cry, keeps seeing her dash off to the bathroom. It's not until the first time he sees her cry that he starts to think of how all of this must be affecting her. She's going to have the baby of a guy she clearly doesn't like much right now and regrets being with. She's sixteen and she's going to have a baby. It's going to change her life completely. There will be no more Cheerios or top of the popularity pyramid. He realizes, remembering her talking about her parents, she'll probably lose them too. There's no way they're going to put up with their Christian teen daughter being pregnant. Thinking of all of this, he starts to wonder if he should be trying to create a plan to get the truth out at all. Sure, it's wrong that Finn thinks he's the father (it feels wrong that she's with Finn at all), but Finn seems to be one of the only certain things she has right now and maybe he shouldn't be so quick to make that go away.

About a week after April arrives in glee club they're going through their second rehearsal of the song that's going to kick off their invitational in a few days when he finds something that leads him to a decision. He had been paired at the beginning of the choreography with Tina and then Santana for some of the male/female interactive bits, but Mr. Schue decides it's not working, and that's how he ends up with Quinn as his first female partner.

She doesn't meet his eyes as she gets into position after the change is made. They begin another run through, she still doesn't look at him and though her hand is supposed to stroke his shoulder and across his chest, her hand stays just far enough away to not actually touch him. She has to look at him for the come-hither-ish finger gesture, and she pulls it off rather well. But then he takes her hand for the spin and she stops in the choreography, looks up at him for all of a second before racing off stage with her hand over her mouth.

The glee-clubbers look as curious as ever and Finn and Mr. Schue just seem to write it off, they know why she throws up so it's not unexpected to them. He can't help but think that whether or not she's actually sick this time (because he wonders if that was just a cover) it's because of him that she fled.

When she returns she executes the choreography as it's intended; touching him and looking at him. But her eyes aren't the same as they used to be (or maybe it's just the way they look at him).

By the end of rehearsal she seems to have it perfected- the routine and act to go with it. To anyone else she probably appears to be dancing with him exactly as she would with anyone else, but he keeps thinking about the look in her eyes all day and by the end of it he's come to a decision. He can't let the truth get out yet. He has to go along with what she wants. Because he figured out what he's sure he saw in her eyes. She's lost and she's breaking and as much as he doesn't want Finn to be in the picture anymore and wants to be recognized as the father so he can start taking care of his responsibilities (or at least figuring out how to), he can't add to that lost breaking part of her.

This also eventually leads him to do something real stupid. (Okay, maybe he was a little bitter still too and that was part of the reason he did it.) If Finn's her only person to lean on (and the guy kept talking about some plan to get Rachel back), then she needed more people to count on, right? These glee kids don't seem nearly as bad as he thought and given all of the time they've been spending together they've already gotten suspicious anyway (he's surprised they hadn't already figured it out honestly). So he tells them all she's pregnant, hoping at least one person in the room will offer her some kind of support so when he makes sure Finn finds out the truth he's not taking away the only person on her side. But since he can't take Finn away yet, he has to go along with what she wants and tell everyone Finn's the father.

When seemingly nothing comes of his act though, he stops trying to think of what to do. He had fooled around with April somewhere in between realizing what he'd have to do and telling everyone the truth. If the truth wasn't coming out (and since the guys from the team were around when she propositioned him) then he has to continue to be himself anyway. But he sees the disgusted look on Quinn's face when the old lady pulls him in for a kiss just before their invitational (and the cold glare she gives him just before the curtain goes up before their first song). He's not making good decisions here. They made sense in his head but they all came out crap.

Maybe he should stop thinking, stop doing anything, fade into the background for her like she seemed to want. Maybe then when he finally did something again it wouldn't end in him feeling like more of a screw up than he usually does. (It doesn't surprise him that everything he does seems to be the wrong thing though. He's always done the wrong thing and he's starting to think that he's doomed to forever.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn never thought she'd be glad to have Rachel back in glee and she's still not willing to admit to such a thing. At first she was so caught up in her own problems that she didn't really see April being in glee instead of Rachel as a big deal- they both annoyed her, there was no difference. But now that the old drunk is gone she's actually quite relieved.

For a while there she still didn't care about the older lady and she probably never would have if it wasn't for when she tried to win her over- and very poorly if Quinn does say so herself. She knew most of the club had been converted to at least not minding her presence and quite frankly Quinn didn't care that she was there so she didn't expect April to try and get her support. And perhaps April never really planned to try to win her over either, clearly her plan wasn't smart if she did actually have one, but she did try something.

It was the day after she got switched to being partnered with Puck for the first interactive bit of the choreography for their first song (something Quinn would really rather not think of) and she had found herself up-chucking in the bathroom for the sixth time that day and it wasn't even lunch yet. When she came out of the stall April was lathering her lips with multiple coats of lip gloss. Quinn went to rinse her mouth out and wash her hands and planned to say nothing to the older woman. Yet April had other ideas.

"Seems like your morning sickness is a bitch, isn't it?" April says with a glance over to her.

Her eyes turn up to the other woman, narrowing at her in a glare. How could she know? And how could she bring it up so casually? Thank God there wasn't anyone else in here at the moment.

"Oh don't worry," April says, catching her expression, "I won't tell. Hand to God."

And then she tacks on, "But you know, maybe, to show your appreciation for me keeping my mouth shut you and your cheerleader friends could act a little more pleased that I'm in glee- at least around Will. He's worried you kids don't like me and I've won over a few of you, but you cheerleaders are a tough crowd."

"No," Quinn says cutting her off. Somehow this feels like familiar territory. To the older lady's stumped face she elaborates, "I'm going to continue to express my complete dislike and disrespect for you and your presence in glee and encourage my cheerleaders to do so as well."

"Then it looks like your secret's going to get out Blondie," April counters, a confident smirk gracing her face.

"Go ahead," Quinn says with a laugh. She leans in, invading April's space, and gives her a proper introduction to Quinn Fabray, head cheerleader. "You can do whatever you want. Tell everyone you think I'm pregnant, I'm sure nothing will get you quite so much attention for being constantly inebriated. I'm the captain of our first place national cheerleading team, I'm president of the celibacy club, and I'm from a respected family of the community. You're a middle-aged high school drop out who constantly reeks of alcohol. So tell as many people as you want, there's no way anyone would ever believe you over me," Quinn promises confidently.

April seems to consider her for a second, then smiles and concedes, "Touché Blondie." She giggles and adds, "You know, I like you honey, you've got moxie."

"And I don't like you," Quinn promptly responds with a fake smile and with her fake sweet-voice. She drops it all and adds seriously, "If you know what's best for you," she scans the woman and adds, "which you clearly don't, you'll never speak to me again."

Quinn holds her intimidating gaze on the older woman for several more seconds before deciding her work here is done. She leaves the bathroom feeling more like herself than she has in a while. For better or worse that part of her that could be super bitchy to get what she wants had become a part of her. She's sure she's never put it to such good use before and she briefly wonders if it has a practical application other than keeping her at the top of the high school social hierarchy.

Though April appropriately avoids her all day, the next day Quinn realizes that the problem with threatening a drunk is that she's very likely to forget. But the only other things April says to her for the remainder of her stay at McKinley are calling her "Blondie" (which she particularly hates now) and comments on Finn's hotness. The whole thing gets immensely annoying and maybe it's the pregnancy hormones, but it's a good thing April left immediately after their first performance at the invitational because she's pretty sure she would have strangled the woman by the end of the night. Not that Rachel hasn't inspired her to want to be violent, but at least with Rachel she hasn't felt such a strong urge to follow through (not yet at least).

So upon Rachel's return, and despite Finn's obvious feelings for her and her immensely obvious feelings for him, she's actually glad to have Rachel back. Well, glad is far too strong a word to use, but she feels a bit at ease- Rachel is at least a form of crazy and annoying she's well practiced at dealing with and given the turn her life has taken anything familiar is at least somewhat comforting right now.

Quinn's moment of relief for one simple thing in her life is quickly taken away though. No one had mentioned it to her before the invitational (she can't figure out why), but apparently the afternoon before the event everyone found out she's pregnant. She initially suspected April, but when Santana confronts her she mentions that Puck spilled the truth. (She can't figure out why he did it or why he lied and said Finn was the father when he was the only one who knew Finn definitely wasn't. But there are far too many things that are confusing in her life right now so she tries to just let this one go.)

She finds out that everyone knows thanks to Santana, who is the first one to confront her shortly after their last performance at the invitational. Santana drags her to a corner of backstage, far from everyone else, and demands to know if what Puck said was true, did Finn get her pregnant? Everyone's going to know eventually, right? So there's not much point denying it. From her confirmation Santana says bunches of things. Like, what could she do to make sure Sue makes her head cheerleader when Quinn inevitably gets kicked off the team? If she's pregnant how come she looks thinner now? What kind of _Leave It To Beaver_ universe was she living in not to think to use a condom? Does she know she's going to get fat now? (She smiles when she asks that one.) Was the sex good at least? Because as dumb as Finn was she kind of doubted he'd be able to be.

Quinn stands there and lets the other cheerleader rant all of this. They had never been actual friends, her and Santana. They both wanted to be the most popular girl in school so they were competitors, but in being so they both knew that it was in their best interest to surround themselves with other popular girls- and they were the two most popular so it made sense that they spent ample time together in public. But they had never had real conversations, which was also partially due to them having very little in common, nor did they do any of the things real friends did. Yet, before Santana began her rant/attack, she had asked if she had the fact that she's pregnant confirmed by a doctor and rushed on to say that she was very familiar with the people who worked at the Planned Parenthood in Findlay, she could take her there if she wanted. It was probably the nicest thing either one of them had ever done for each other, that one minute of actual concern. Quinn knows Santana will try to take her place on Cheerios and within the school and to do so she'll make fun of Quinn and spread rumors about her as they commonly did to each other. But that one minute was so unexpectedly nice that Quinn finds herself responding to most of Santana's demanding questions. Surprisingly, even if she was mostly telling lies, it was nice to talk to someone about it.

When they're done with their few minutes of talking, they rejoin everyone else backstage as they finish getting changed back into their own clothes. Quinn finds herself closely watching how everyone looks at her. Maybe it's just because the invitational went better than they thought, but everyone seems so happy right now that they don't appear to be looking at her any differently.

The weekend passes uneventfully. On Sunday as she sits in church she realizes that it's the third Sunday she's been pregnant on (well, that she realized). She had tried to ignore the fact that she was pregnant most of the weekend, reveling the fact that at home she could pretend because no one there knew and when she returned to school too many people would know now to constantly be able to pretend. Yet, when she returns to school on Monday no one says anything to her about her condition and no one really looks at her differently. (Which is how things go within the club for a while at least.)

-o-o-o-

Though Quinn spends Monday worrying about everyone in glee club looking at her differently in the halls or in the classes she has with some of them, by the time Tuesday and glee practice arrives she has other concerns weighing on her mind. She's felt distinctly heavier since she woke up that morning. She's fairly sure she didn't feel this way yesterday and according to the scale in Coach Sylvester's office she's still at the six pounds below her normal weight she had come to thanks to morning sickness. But the feeling of heaviness hangs with her and makes her think that she must appear to be huge when really she can see that she doesn't look any different.

Also, towards the end of the night on Tuesday she gets her first migraine. She gets another one during fifth period on Wednesday and another just before glee practice on Thursday. She doesn't know why this is happening and considers that it could be pregnancy related and perhaps she should look that up. Yet, she's nervous about doing any googling on her computer. She's changed her password every week since her parents gave her a used desktop when she was eleven, but still she's worried they'll somehow crack it, see her internet history, and find out the truth.

(Plus, she's terrified about reading about what's happening to her. It makes it all a little more real than she can handle at the moment.)

But after she gets another migraine as she's doing her homework Thursday night and this one makes her sick to her stomach and dizzy, as soon as she's able to, she does some googling. The first thing to come up is titled "Week 7: Avoiding Those Migraines." She's seven weeks along so she figures that it's what she's looking for. A suspicion which is quickly confirmed when she clicks on the site. It turns out to be a motherhood and baby shopping site, but it has week-by-week and term-by-term guides to pregnancy.

She tries to avoid the bit at the top of the page about the baby's development, but it's right there and her eyes linger. Her baby is about the size of a raspberry. It's got facial features developing, a mouth and tongue in clearly starting to form. Its muscles are developing and it's starting to move around.

She reads on, trying to focus on the reason she was on her computer in the first place. Apparently migraines, especially starting around the seventh week, are perfectly typical. To get rid of them they recommend avoiding stress and anxiety. Yeah, she thinks, fat chance website. She's sixteen, pregnant, has parents that will surely crucify her (and they weren't even Catholic), has her boyfriend who isn't the father thinking he is and stressing about it, at least twelve people in school know her condition, and one of those people is the actual father who is a confusing situation on his own. Eliminate stress and anxiety? She wishes she could, wishes she knew how.

As she gets to the bottom of the page, she see's the back button that will lead her to the previous weeks. She puts the arrow over it, lingers there, sighs and concedes. The first thing she learns is that her baby's heart likely started beating at some point last week. (_What if it didn't?_ runs through her mind, making her worry her lip and preventing her from reading on for a minute. If something went wrong she should have noticed something like Addie had, right? So if nothing like that happened to her then the baby had to be okay. Right?) Also, her baby is forming little arms and legs that would probably only appear like little buds right now if she could see them.

Next, she learns about what's happening to her again only this time it's much more frightening. According to this site (which she's now finding more than a bit dubious because it also seems to be promoting some kind of pregnancy pillow) some women start gaining weight as early as six weeks and even if they don't, their abdomen can start to get thicker making pants feel tight. She thought her uniform felt a little more snug than usual, but figured that Coach Sylvester had just pissed off their dry cleaner again. Now though, what if the heavy feeling she had been feeling was actual weight. She races to her scale without another though.

Quinn's scale confirms exactly what she knew from the one in Coach Sylvester's office- she hadn't gained weight. When she returns to reading her heaviness is explained (she really should have just kept reading). Apparently though she may not be gaining weight, her uterus is definitely growing- hence the heavier weight feeling.

It then says that her breasts would likely start getting bigger as of last week. She hadn't really noticed anything, but the cheer uniforms were quite stiff and supportive and she didn't really spend that much time out of it. She supposed if it's not already happening, it's a change that will come soon. She'll have to go shopping for bras to accommodate that really soon, before her parents find out and she's possibly cut off. (And though she's not ready for it, maybe she should add some charges of maternity clothes to the credit card bill with the bras. She'll have to buy stuff somewhere that won't show up as being specifically a maternity wear place on the bill, but maybe she should buy a few things for later, just in case.)

There's another bit about gaining weight at the end of the week six article, but she really can't take much more about weight so she skims through it for the highlights.

She goes back through weeks five and all the way back to one, never skipping the part of the article for the week that discussed the baby's development. When she's done, she doesn't let herself go on to her next week. The past was hard enough to get through, the future felt impossible. So she shuts off her computer and returns to her homework. She tries to concentrate on it and not on everything she just read. She makes it thorough all of the things she needs to do, but she cries herself to sleep because this wasn't supposed to be her life.

-o-o-o-

On Thursday she's tired (too many things weighing on her mind to sleep peacefully), and though she hasn't had a migraine yet today, she has had neck pain and a tiny bit of back pain. She read that that was normal though so she tries to ignore it.

But what she can't ignore is how tired and worried and stressed Finn seems. And she knows it's because she's pregnant and he thinks the baby is his, which means that everything he's going through is her fault. She doesn't want to do this to him, but it feels like it's too late (and if she loses his support, who will she have left?).

She feels physically and emotionally awful and she finds herself wishing that she knew how to eliminate at least a bit of stress from her life so maybe she could have the chance to figure some things out. Then, serendipitously, Mr. Schue tells them who they're competing with for sectionals. Suddenly going to glee practice doesn't seem that important. They're surely going to win. And on that note, now she has something she can skip and hopefully relax a little more so she can physically feel better and think a little more so maybe she can resolve some of the things causing her emotional turmoil.

Despite wanting to skip the next glee practice on Monday (Mr. Schue had worked out a way to make sure they got together four days a week- at least briefly), Quinn has an odd sense of obligation and finds herself at practice. It turns out she would have been the only one to skip, though no one who showed up (not even Rachel surprisingly) seems to be taking their imminent competition seriously. They do a run through of a song and as Finn sits by Kurt she can see that distant, worried look in his eyes again. She's pulled out of feeling guilty for being the cause of it by Mr. Schue talking about how lazy they're being today and how they still need to take the competition seriously. She honestly doesn't agree. And furthermore her neck is really killing her now so she's so not coming to practice tomorrow.

And she doesn't. She skips Tuesday's rehearsal and heads to the mall. She needed to get this done before she ran out of time anyway. She purchases some larger bras, nothing maternity specific though just in case her parents happen to see them she didn't want them to get suspicious. She buys a few more baby doll cut dresses and looser fitting tops. She wanders through the maternity section at a department store (because then it would show up on a credit card bill as Macy's rather than her other choice of stores- Motherhood Maternity). When she's approached by a sales clerk she lies and says that she's browsing for her pregnant older sister, wanted to buy her a gift but since she's in Cincinnati and hasn't seen her in a while she doesn't know what sizes would fit her at seven months. The woman is very helpful, asks her questions about her sister's frame and pre-pregnancy size and whether she knows how much weight she's gained. She points her in the direction of some especially flexible clothes, things that should work even if she's up to ten pounds off on her weight. Then, she leaves Quinn to consider. She stands there, feeling the fabric between her fingers. When she's seven months along it'll be the end of winter/beginning of spring. Though the dress before her is surprisingly nice for maternity wear, she knows it won't be what she'll need. For that matter, none of this will probably work once she really needs it as it's not for the right season. She leaves, supposing her plan to buy ahead in preparation for when she won't be able to afford such necessities was poorly thought out. Just another thing in her life that didn't work out.

When she gets home she rearranges her closet by what definitely won't fit much longer and what things may be more expandable and comfortable. She doesn't like that she has to mess up her previous color coding system to do it, which her mother may notice should she see the inside of her closet, but she resolves to keep her closet doors shut always. She needs this organization, this beginning semblance of a plan, it's the first time she's felt like she's making progress towards…something since all of this began.

She goes to glee practice on Wednesday, hears the announcement about the girls versus boys thing. Honestly, she's not paying that much attention to it all, she can't. That morning, as she was at the top of the pyramid during Cheerios practice, she felt a pain in her abdomen. It shocked her and though she thinks she kept her face controlled (she didn't), her leg quivered at the unexpected feeling (almost would have fallen if she hadn't noticed that start of it). She made up some lame excuse about glee club making her tired to Coach Sylvester- she loves blaming glee club for anything so it works. But all she can think about for the rest of the school day is what if that pain meant something was wrong. She wanted to head directly home after school, but Mr. Schue caught her in the hall, asked her about missing practice the day before and she couldn't lie as well to him. He was so nice, asking her how she felt, telling her to remember that he's there if she needs anything at all, that she lets him escort her to practice because she can't ditch it when he was there offering her some of the only support she would probably ever have throughout this whole thing.

When Quinn does get home she goes straight for her computer. She had bookmarked the site with the week-by-week pregnancy details (her computer was password protected and her parents were probably too self involved to spy on her anyway) and decides to check it first. To her relief, she finds mentions of slight abdominal pain being normal once she clicks on and scans week eight. If it continues though, she'll need to call a doctor (it hasn't happened again since cheer practice).

The idea of calling a doctor starts a whole new problem she had forgotten about for a little while there. The clinic she went to only had a general physician who confirmed by blood test that she was pregnant, but they didn't have an OBGYN. The doctor warned her that she'd need to go somewhere else for that kind of care. She can't go to one of the two doctors in town though, her mom would surely find out thanks to word of mouth. This gets her researching doctors in neighboring towns.

As the deadline to call a doctors office before they close for the day approaches, Quinn finally settles on a doctor in Wapakoneta, about twenty-five minutes away (she hopes it's far enough to keep her secret safe a while longer). She calls and schedules an appointment. She mentions to the nurse on the phone that she's on a tight budget and may not be able to afford as many appointments as she should possibly have. The nurse checks if she's feeling okay so far and then offers that though usually an appointment around week nine/ten would be typical, if she waits to week twelve she could combine her first check up with her first ultrasound (though she could get a different kind of ultrasound done in week ten, but it sounds much more intrusive to Quinn). Quinn's grateful for the help not only in combining her appointments to hopefully cut down on costs, but for mentioning that a ten week check up is normal because when she's twelve weeks and has the appointment, it will be ten weeks since the hot tub with Finn. So she can keep this going a bit longer and maybe get him to go with her. (As awful as she feels for roping Finn into all of this, she really wants someone there to hold her hand.)

-o-o-o-

Puck knew something had been going on with Finn, but he started to get really concerned when he came in tossing around those over-the-counter drugs. Finn barely finished a beer at a party so the fact that he was taking something was concerning.

Puck got it though, why he'd been…different lately. He'd been having a harder time pretending his life was business as usual too. In eight or so months there'd be someone out there with half his DNA (that's how it worked, right? He totally probably should have paid attention in biology). In eight or so months he'd be forever linked to Quinn by a child. (The Quinn part sounded pretty damned good, honestly.) The kid part freaked him the hell out though. He couldn't be a dad. His example of one sucked, he barely had any money (just spent way too much of it on dip and nunchucks- he should have known that would come back to bite him in the ass), and he was so young. He wasn't ready for this, but he tried to get himself ready because he knew it was coming either way. He'd try to tell himself- he's going to be a dad, he's going to be a dad, he's going to be a dad. But at school maintaining and acting within that school of thought was tricky- because here he wasn't the one going to be a dad, that fell to Finn. So he'd end up being his usual self and he'd watch Finn be the one openly trying to hold back how freaked he was. It's all so messed up he doesn't know what to do with it. So, he just goes with it.

He'd gotten momentarily distracted from his internal conflict and his concern for Finn by concern for Quinn. He noticed immediately when she didn't show up for glee practice. Even though he'd seen her at school, he wanted to see that she was okay. So he parked about a block away from her house and waited until he saw her car pull into her driveway, see her get out of it and look fine. (Then, after she was already inside her house, he sat there a few minutes longer. Sometimes, he just felt like being closer to her.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn skips another glee rehearsal. It's Thursday and she doesn't have any particular reason for skipping, nothing else she needs to do really, but she skips anyway.

She decides to drive out to Foster's and when she finds it all locked up she ventures over to Foster and Addie's house, but it appears no one's there either. She supposes Addie must still be off staying with her children. She knows that's probably good for Addie after losing Foster, but she really wishes the older lady was there, she could use someone to talk to about everything, especially one had been through something like this herself.

She goes back home and thinks for a while. She doesn't come to any conclusions or clarity at all. Everything about her life now feels so hopeless.

Quinn skips another glee rehearsal at the start of the next week, followed by skipping the boys' performance. She supposes that she should go to see Finn, be supportive, but it honestly doesn't feel like she has a reason to do much of anything any more. Of course, she's continued to go to cheer practice and do all of her schoolwork and participate in some expected social activities while at school. But mostly she just feels awful.

Then, after the guys have performed during homeroom (one of the times they go to glee on Tuesdays), Rachel finds her at her locker.

She's not surprised Rachel's trying to talk her back into going to glee club given they need all the girls to compete against the boys. She's surprised by the way Rachel goes about it though. When Rachel said that people in glee wouldn't judge her, well she had to stop and turn around at that. So far it hadn't felt like they had, but she figured maybe she had just been oblivious to it, but here Rachel was saying that they would never do that.

She's been awful to Rachel. And yet, here Rachel was being the first person to reach out to her, the first to make her feel like maybe her life isn't over and that there are still things to enjoy about it in the here and now. She knows Rachel probably has ulterior motives in this conversation, but it doesn't make her points any less good. So, she decides to go to the practice Rachel scheduled for the girls during brunch tomorrow morning and she tells Santana and Brittany that they have to show up as well.

Next, Quinn seeks out Finn and apologizes for not coming to see him perform with the guys. She lies and says that she wasn't feeling well as her excuse for not coming. But as she spends the afternoon with Finn she realizes that he seems different. He seems stressed and hyper and intense. When they part ways after their ice cream date, the way he was hangs with her the rest of the day.

About half way through her homework that night Quinn realizes that the way Finn was acting that day wasn't necessarily new. He hadn't really been himself since she told him she was pregnant. She understands why, but the guy he was, was a really good guy, who didn't deserve to go through any of this really heavy stuff he was. But how can she fix this all now? How can she relieve the pressure her lie has placed on him?

Only one way comes to her. If the pressure was created by the existence of the baby, then she'd have to take its existence away. Not literally of course, but if it officially became someone else's problem then Finn wouldn't have to worry about becoming a teenaged dad, because he wouldn't be anymore.

Terri Schuester already wanted her baby and Mr. Schuester was probably one of the best men she knew, her child would be in good hands with him. But still, did she really want to decide already that she was going to give it away? Honestly, not really.

She decides to go about this rationally though as feelings seemed to mess everything up- after all, they were what led to this situation. So she makes a pro con list. It doesn't take her long to realize that if she kept the baby there was very, very little she could offer it. She couldn't have Finn still thinking it was his then because she couldn't trap him like that, so he was out. She'd probably be out on her own because her parents wouldn't stand by her, so at seventeen when they baby's born she'd have to support it fully on nothing more than a minimum wage job, which didn't seem possible. She wouldn't have anyone else around in her life to help out likely, and therefore she'd be the only one to love the child. (She realizes she's leaving Puck out of this, she doesn't know what to think of him or his possible involvement yet. She knows what he said that day he confronted her, but she's just not ready or able to spent any time thinking about her baby's father considering that he broke her heart and it still felt so shattered.)

If she did give her baby to the Schuester's, it would be loved by both of them. Terri may be crazy, but she seemed like she wanted a baby an awful lot and would probably never take having one for granted (like her parents did with her and her sister). And Mr. Schue would be a terrific dad. He'd already seemed so excited about the baby he thought his wife was having and he was nice and caring and tried so hard. On top of being more prepared parents, if she gave the baby to them it would be raised in a family that could actually provide for it- not as well as she was provided for, but unlike if she kept the baby she knew that they would never be forced into having it ever go wanting.

Despite the pro and con lists creating a clear winner, in the end, Quinn asks herself which home she would rather be brought up in (and therefore which would be best for her child). Would she want to be with a single teenaged mother who was all alone and had all of the challenges of a woman in her situation? Or would she want a stable and full family? She'd want the latter. Hell, despite Terri seeming a little nutters, she'd rather be a part of Mr. Schue's family than her own sometimes. So, the decision seems so clear then.

If she gives up her baby Finn will stop having a reason to stress out or destroy his life over the idea that he's going to be a dad. If she gives up her baby she could return to being a high school student instead of becoming a mom so young. If she gives up her baby, most importantly, it could have a better life than she could imagine offering it at the moment.

(She cries that night as she's trying to fall asleep. She's not sure what brought it on. She knows she made the most responsible decision she could today and that she had to seek Terri out to let her know tomorrow. But there is this ache inside her when all is dark and silent, and suddenly, she can't help but cry.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn has never been so grateful to hear Rachel Berry on a tirade. She hadn't been berating them for almost an hour as Santana quipped (though it did kind of feel like that), as brunch was not nearly that long. But all of the admonishing serves as a very effective distraction from what she had decided the previous night and what she would be doing later today as a result of it.

(She doesn't notice the way she holds herself, holds the place where her baby is, as if she's trying to hang onto it.)

Then Kurt comes in and says about the medication they all took and she has a much bigger distraction. "Drugs"? Seriously? And then the details start rolling out about Finn having gotten them from Terri and it brings her right back to the things she didn't want to think of, which is what she's left with as the all head off to class- agreeing to meet during lunch to talk and hopefully practice.

Finn willingly took drugs? He'd once confided in her that he never drank more than one beer because if he got drunk, he thought the ground would appear too far away from his height. Which was really stupid of course, but still, he was good, he didn't do bad things like abuse over-the-counter medication. This all must be getting to him even more than she though so despite the fact that Terri gave him the "drugs," she has to follow through with her decision even more now than she had to before.

When the girls reconvene Rachel has decided that they should take the same performance enhancers to make the competition fair. They don't need much convincing so they head to the nurses office and all take what Mrs. Schuester puts in their cups. Though, she gets something different, something that's good for the baby.

They then return to the choir room to practice their routine and by the end of lunch, as the only sober one in the bunch, Quinn can really see the pep-pills taking effect. She thought all of those girls taking something that made them hyper and energetic would be really annoying, but surprisingly it rubs off on her and by the end of practice she's having so much fun she forgets that she's pregnant and has thousands of worries on her mind because of it.

That free feeling goes away as she returns to classes, but as soon as she's with the girls again (doing a quick run through in the bathroom after changing before their performance) she feels lighter and happier. She'd had fun being in glee club, but she's honestly never had this much fun. This is ridiculously enjoyable as she dances and sings the upbeat songs in her pretty yellow dress.

And it would have been purely fun, but as soon as she was up there in front of the guys, even though she had her back to them, she could feel his eyes on her. As soon as she turns around her suspicion is confirmed and she sees Puck's eyes on her. They stay and follow her around the whole performance. He even starts smirking/smiling at her at one bit. He covers well at the end, just trying to pull off impressed. But she wants to know why he watched her, wants to know why he smiled watching her (wants to know why him smiling made her smile bigger).

She can_not_ think about that now though. Now that the performance is over, there's only one more thing she has to do today.

She finds Terri in the hallway and gives her a speech she'd worked up in her head about why she couldn't keep a baby, how she liked her life and didn't want it to change. She knows her life is changing no matter what she does with the baby. As soon as everyone finds out she's going to lose her social status, feel like a complete and total outcast at school, lose cheerleading and therefore one of her ways into college, lose her family probably. All of that was happening from being pregnant, not from what she would do with the baby. But pretending her decision was solely about the future was easier. It made quick sense and left her without having to explain anything to Terri.

Then Terri asks about Finn, and she responds honestly. She hadn't said anything completely honest to Terri yet (yes, she wasn't lying that she liked glee, but it was a lie that it was a reason she was doing this). But now, she tells her the truth, that she has to give up the baby because she doesn't want Finn to be stressing out as much as he has been, doesn't want him to hurt himself over this (because it's not his problem- she doesn't add on).

Quinn had also decided that if her parents probably won't be supporting her, then she might as well try and figure out a way to make sure she can provide for the baby and herself until she gives it up. When she suggest to Terri that she pay doctor's bills and throw in some clothes for her (she knows she won't get through a cold Ohio winter with anything she has now fitting or anything that could fit being weather appropriate), Terri really doesn't like that idea and refuses.

Quinn doesn't take back the promise she just made about giving her and Mr. Schue her baby, but she doesn't rush off to Finn to tell him her decision about giving it up either. She had thought she would tell him as soon as she made it official. But now, after speaking to Terri for those few minutes, she feels like hesitating. She could always change her mind to Terri, but once she told Finn she couldn't take it back. When she really thinks about it though, Terri's done some pretty…concerning things (giving students medicine to abuse, asking her if she was having the baby when she knew how far along she was, and not seeming to want the baby enough to pay a little for it now). So she decides maybe she'll hold off just a little bit on telling Finn, let her decision sink in (and keep an eye on Terri while she's at their school, try and observe her and see if she made the right decision).

Of course then Terri gets fired for giving kids medication to abuse and they all get the terrible news about Ms. Sylvester being a co-director of glee. She hangs out with Finn at his house after the practice with the announcement and he proceeds to get anxious over what will happen with glee now that the person trying to destroy them is a part of it. He seems so different from the carefree, happy guy she started dating and she knows that part of the reason he's changed is her fault. So before she knows it she starts telling him her decision. "You know how you said that you were okay with anything I wanted to do about the baby?" she asks, interjecting in his rant about how glee was getting messed up.

"Yeah," he says with a nervous nod, awaiting what she was going to say and how it was going to change his life.

"I want to give it up," she says firmly. She explains simply, "We can't take care of a baby. I'm not ready to."

He nods a few times, sighs, and says, "Okay." He tries to smile at her, but it's very obviously forced. So he settles for wrapping his arms around her and hugging her. She hugs him back, sitting on his couch and holding him for a while, because she really needed to be held after the emotional day she had.

-o-o-o-

It's not that hard to go back to fully fulfilling her role as Coach Sylvester's spy. Nothing she has done has worked so far and Quinn's confident that most of the glee kids would never let the club get destroyed. So she figures nothing she does is very important, Coach Sylvester will never succeed in her mission. Though it is in her best interest to do anything Coach wants as if she's going to keep her secret a secret then she needs to keep her position as head cheerleader as long as possible.

What is hard is going to her first OBGYN appointment.

She does the first part that she has to wear nothing but a paper gown for alone. This part takes quite a bit longer than the other part of her appointment as the doctor has her go through her medical history, her family's medical history, any medical history of the father that she knows (which includes a very awkward moment where she has to tell the woman that the boy out in the waiting room for her isn't the actual father so no, please don't go ask him any questions). There's a long discussion of genetic testing, which the doctor assures is perfectly typical and almost never anything to worry about. Then the doctor starts doing some actual stuff to her. There's a thorough physical, a pelvic exam (which was highly uncomfortable) to check for a variety of problems/diseases, a urine sample, and blood tests. Her doctor then advises her on what's to come in her pregnancy and some good practices, such as how to eat well. She nods along with all of it; feeling like it's a whirlwind of information and knowing that she'd probably just be looking it all up online again later anyway.

All of that, wasn't the hardest part of the appointment though.

The doctor told her what would happen during the ultrasound. She said that the technician would put a gel like substance on the wand and would then use it and put some pressure on her stomach as they looked for the baby. The tech would tell her whether or not everything was okay, which it likely was. This was the earliest she could possibly find out the sex of the baby, so there would possibly be a mention of that if she wanted to know. Then she'd be given two DVD's and two pictures of her baby to keep- though those would take a few minutes, they'd bring them to her in the waiting room after. And then her appointment would be finished and she should schedule another one with the ladies at the front desk before she leaves.

It sounded simple enough. She'd lay on a table, little bit of pressure on her stomach, get confirmation the baby was okay, and go, basically. Only, that wasn't what happened.

She goes into the room, Finn looking nervous as hell as he follows behind her. The tech bluntly tells her to unzip her skirt and roll up her top, they'll need her abdomen to be clear of clothing. She tries to do it without revealing too much to Finn, even though he's seen her in a bikini. And as soon as she has her clothes positioned and she's laying down on the table, that's when she starts freaking out. All of the things the doctor mentioned about things that could be wrong (but there was very small chance of) with the baby racing through her mind. And what if its heart really never started beating like she had feared a few weeks ago? Plus, she knows that the second she sees it, it all becomes a lot more real. And this baby can't feel that real because she's already decided what has to be done with it.

She feels Finn take her hand, which is the exact reason she wanted him here in the first place, only it doesn't feel as comforting as she thought it would. And he promises her that everything will be fine, she looks up at him, surprised that it does nothing to comfort her either.

Then the tech interjects, emphasizing that their ages mean that nothing will likely be wrong. She tells her that the gel stuff will be cold, but then she whooshes her hand over like she's not going to be careful not to get the stuff on her clothes, which honestly seems really unprofessional of the lady. Quinn didn't think she'd have to tell her not to mess up her uniform by being reckless and completing her job well, though apparently she did have to. The tech gives her a bored glare and continues on to get nosy and ask them what their plans are concerning the baby, like it's any of her business. Could this lady get any less professional? Apparently the answer was yes, because despite that they were never asked if they wanted to learn the sex of the baby, she just comes out and tells them, before she even mentions whether or not the baby is actually okay. If she wasn't so freaked out still and had a million more important things on her mind, Quinn would totally verbally bitch slap the tech for her complete lack of tact and incredible rudeness.

Of course she does have two very specific more important things on her mind.

One: The way Finn said he'd do whatever she wanted. Somehow, since last week when she told him she wanted to give the baby away, it's suddenly become an actual topic between them. Before that he seemed to be respectfully not pressuring her and waiting for her to make a decision. Now it seems like he's always questioning or wanting to discuss the decision she made. She thinks that he may want to keep the baby. Only she absolutely cannot let him do that because it's not his baby.

Two: She's having a girl. When she'd think about what she wanted for her life and dreamed of a family, a little girl was always part of that dream. A girl who would have her blonde hair and who's hair she would braid or put in those sponge curlers or a million other little activities any mother who wasn't hers did with their little girls. She's having a girl. She's having a _girl._

She has to stop herself from thinking of anything any further. If she doesn't then she's going to start crying right here in the doctor's office where Finn and Mr. Schue are waiting for her to come out so they can go. So she concentrates on getting the gel off her stomach and makes sure her uniform is on perfectly and forces herself to go out the door to the exam room not thinking of anything that just happened here until she's alone again; she's tired of crying in front of everyone so much.

She spends most of the evening curled up in bed, trying not to think of anything and failing miserably. She tries not to think of how her little girl would look (her blonde hair and his soft brown eyes), because, as she tries to keep reminding herself, it's not going to be her little girl. She has to start playing that as a mantra in her head: she is not her little girl, this is not her baby.

So when Finn comes up with the world's stupidest name and starts talking like she's going to be theirs, she snaps. She _cannot_ do this. She starts freaking out all over again. She's sixteen she can't keep the baby. She can't provide for one, she can't raise one. And Finn can't either because it will mess up his life and why doesn't he just understand that? She screwed up by involving him, but she's giving the baby away to make up for that, to save him, and him talking about keeping her (when she feels like…), she can't handle it.

Then Finn has to go and make it worse by comparing her to Rachel Berry. For the life of her she doesn't understand why he's still standing there in front of her arguing with her. He doesn't really want her, that's seemed so clear lately (and everything keeps annoyingly reminding her of it, like that stupid song Mr. Schue chooses). So why is he still here? He'd be so much better off if he just left her and went off with Rachel as he seemed to want to.

Although, she did tell him to pick anyone to leave her for/cheat with other than Rachel, but that's just because she finally just figured out Rachel's actual motivation in being nice to her. She had been grateful to Rachel since that day before their all-girl performance, thinking she may just have a few other people there for her despite her condition, and now she feels so stupid for thinking that. She decides to get back at Rachel for making her feel foolish about actually almost trusting her by scaring the girl as best she can. But she decides to save that for later. For now, she just wants to forget about all of this.

-o-o-o-

Apparently God doesn't want her to forget about all of the stressors in her life because he's been throwing them in her face all freaking day.

First, her morning sickness, which had been waning off considerably, reared its ugly head this morning. Though she suspects that her breakfast of a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon may have had something to do with her throwing up. (Her doctor said fish was good for her and the baby, and quite frankly, it had sounded good this morning. Though clearly it wasn't her smartest idea.)

Second, she experienced some light cramping during third period. When she told her doctor about this happening before, she assured her that occasional pain was perfectly normal. Still, she can't help worriedly thinking that something is going wrong for every second it lasts.

Third, Finn hasn't been talking to her really all day. After their fight yesterday he still seems to be mad. And she wants him to be free of this situation she's put him in, knows it would probably be better for him if he did just decide to leave her for Rachel, but she misses him. She spends all day wishing she hadn't snapped at him and treated him better so that she wouldn't be spending today alone without him.

Fourth, the glee kids want to meet up for a secret get together in this midst of split groups. That's not the bad part, that's actually pretty nice. They end up singing Nelly's "Ride Wit Me." Which again, isn't the bad part, it's actually pretty fun. Or at least it would have been all fun if Puck hadn't been playing his guitar for it. Him playing his guitar, it makes memories of Foster's flood her mind and suddenly she finds herself standing close to him. The song ends, Mr. Schue comes in, and she's distracted from having to think about the fact that she's still right next to him by Mr. Schue providing thing number five that she didn't want to think about being thrown in her face today.

Fifth, Mr. Schue chooses to have Finn and Rachel take the leads on "No Air" as she's forced to stand between Puck and Brittany and basically just hum and sway.

This is troublesome for two reasons. The first being that it reminds her of her turmoil over Finn and Rachel's clear feelings for each other, but her wanting Finn to still be there for her as he's the only person who really has been so far. The second being that it's highly annoying that Rachel knowingly flirts with Finn throughout rehearsal of the song right in front of her. Okay, Finn flirts with Rachel back- but she knows that's not intentional on Finn's part, he's just oblivious. But Rachel knows that she's flirting with a guy in front of his pregnant girlfriend. Could she be any more insensitive? She's definitely going to have to have that talk with Rachel about Finn very soon.

(There's a third reason the song/performance bothers her that she'd rather not admit: Puck. Mr. Schue just had to go and pick a song that has lyrics that feel accurate, especially at the moment as she's been near him for like ten minutes now. She's finding it increasingly harder to breathe with him right there, and despite the lyrics she's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.)

To top off the five heavy reminders of everything she just wanted to forget, at least for today, Coach Sylvester calls on her and gives her a task for tomorrow. The task is going to make it so that she can't forget anything tomorrow either. On that thought she figures she might as well add her confrontation with Rachel to her list of things to take care of the next day. If she's not forgetting everything tomorrow, then she might as well embrace it.

-o-o-o-

It's hard mustering up real anger towards Mr. Schue. He's a nice man and he doesn't deserve to be attacked even if he's being stupid in sinking to Coach Sylvester's level right now.

What's harder though is the line she has to say to Puck and Brittany. It's the first time she's even sort of say anything to him since the day he confronted her about the baby. She doesn't want it to seem like her saying something is an invitation for him to start talking to her (though, why hasn't he tried to talk to her?). So she turns her back to them, says her line and hope it serves its purpose as she hurries away from both of them.

Thankfully, it works and she doesn't have to do anything else involving them to get them to change to Sylvester's team.

Now that that task is complete, it's time to complete the other task she set for herself today: go scare Rachel.

-o-o-o-

She decides to go with fierce and intimidating. She figured hurt and crying could have been another route. Something along the lines of weepily crying, "Why are trying to take away the father of my unborn child?" But she doubts that would work on Rachel. No, Rachel needed to be dealt with by a firm hand, and that's exactly what Quinn plans on giving her.

She slams the girl's locker shut on her and tells her what's about to happen. She's not sure where she got "Treasure Trail" from, but it does sound insulting so there's no need to give it much thought.

It's surprising how easily saying she's having Finn's baby keeps slipping out. She knows it's not true and she feels awful for making him think that, but she somehow can't let it go.

Then, Rachel concedes that she's right. Which almost dumfounds her for a second until Rachel then accuses her of being a spy. She denies it, as she's naturally inclined to do.

And then, damn Rachel, she starts making good points again just like she had last time they actually said anything to each other during that whole mash-up girls versus boys thing.

She knows Ms. Sylvester is only out for herself and she'll get ditched by her and the Cheerios the second the truth comes out. She also knows that the glee kids, who still haven't judged her despite the fact that she's never been particularly nice to them, are the closest thing she has to real friends.

But what Rachel doesn't understand is that she needs Coach Sylvester distracted by her obsession with taking down glee so that she doesn't learn the truth, so that the whole school doesn't learn the truth, because she knows that the more people that know, the more easily and quicker her parents will find out the truth. And when her parents find out she's pregnant, she may really be on her own then.

It's then that she figures out that though she wished Finn would just leave her like he seemed to want to and that Coach Sylvester would stop using her so that she was hurting the only people who were truly nice to her, they're not the only ones hanging on to something. They're both hanging on to her, but she's hung on to doing what Coach Sylvester wanted back because she doesn't want anything else to change in her life, especially something that could lead to her parents finding out and doing God knows what to her. And she'd been hanging on to Finn like he'd been hanging on to her. He did it probably out of obligation, she did it because he was the only one really there for her through any of this and she didn't want to lose him and risk finding out that she really had no one at all. She knows he deserves to be free of this, but, in the end, she's just not courageous enough to let him go.

She is, however, a little more courageous in separating herself from Coach Sylvester, which she decides to start doing as soon as possible.

-o-o-o-

The next day, before school, she seeks out Mr. Schue. Coach Sylvester had told her she had to do what she did yesterday, but she never said she couldn't apologize for it. Mr. Schue had been nice enough to even drive her and Finn to the doctor's out of town when they felt too nervous to do so. He's a really good guy and deserves her to apologize even if Coach Sylvester would be pissed about if she found out. She can't keep doing things based on what Coach Sylvester wants, she knows that in doing so she's hurting some of the only people that may be good to her once the truth about her condition is inevitably spread around school.

So she heads to Mr. Schue's classroom and apologizes. She says that it's no excuse, but she's been stressed lately and she apologizes for her outburst. Mr. Schue tells her it's okay and he asks her if she wants to talk about anything. She declines, and he reminds her that he's around whenever she does want to talk and that she should really accept the notes he knows Ms. Pillsbury has been sending her to go see her. She promises she'll consider it.

She'd been getting at least two notices to go see Ms. Pillsbury a week for quite a few weeks now. But she made her decision, everything still seemed so messed up, and she really just couldn't handle the possibility that the woman may give her more to think about in whatever they talked about. So she'd been blowing off the requests and despite promising to consider going to see the guidance counselor, she knows she's going to continue to do so for a while longer. She just can't handle any new stressors right now.

Which is why she should have known that one would pop up.

No, it's not the temporary disbanding of the glee club over the chaos that their directors turned into that adds to her problems. It's that the entire school is very soon going to know she's pregnant and Ms. Sylvester knows.

She can feel Finn's arm around her and she can feel Puck's concerned gaze. But mostly she feels the ground falling out from under her. Everything is going to change even more now. Her parents will probably find out the truth soon, since everyone else will know. She'll be kicked off Cheerios. She'll become unpopular. She'll be criticized and judged by everyone – the pregnant president of the celibacy club. Everything is falling apart.

She manages not to cry in front of everyone during glee club, but only because they disband a minute after the announcement, Mr. Schue giving them some time, and as soon as they're out in the hallway she does find herself crying in Finn's arms. She cries for the life she's completely lost now and she cries for the bit that she'll surely lose soon.

(She also cries because being in Finn's arms has never felt more wrong. Its uncomfortable and awkward, and not a comfort at all. She's starting to think that all the decisions she's ever made have been wrong.)

-o-o-o-

When they perform "Keep Holding On" after school ends that day (they had had their meeting during lunch- and this was something they worked on before Sue came on board), she's crying before they even begin.

She hates that Rachel was right, but she feels glad that she was too. For as the song goes on she finds that the glee kids still aren't judging her. And even though she hasn't been great to them, they seem to feel genuinely bad that she's going through what she is. Surprisingly, even Rachel, who admitted she had ulterior motives in being nice to her, seems to feel bad for what she's going through as she changes the choreography so she gets to interact with Finn a bit during it.

Then, as she has her bits with Artie, he smiles at her in a friendly gesture, making her smile a watery smile in return. And Kurt looks like he's ready to cry with her. (She keeps feeling Puck glance her way, wearing a concerned gaze.) It all means so much more to her than she could have thought. She's never known real friendship and not for the first time she wishes she had, wishes she was better at returning it and expressing the things she feels.

-o-o-o-

Things get awful at school from there.

She spent last week worrying about Finn, him wanting Rachel, Rachel wanting him, being in the middle of Coach Sylvester's plots. But now the only thing she has on her mind is how she's being treated at school. There's a giant backlash from the popular kids about her news and somehow they've decided to target the only people being nice to her too- the glee kids. And they target Finn, but in all fairness that makes more sense as they believe he got her pregnant.

Although, she feels like kicking their asses when Finn gets slushied. She tells Finn that doing so isn't worth it, but it honestly feels like it's worth it. Rationally she knows that it won't solve anything though and solving the way she's being treated and everyone else is being treated as a result of her situation is the only thing she wants right now.

(It also seems like lately she's always catching or feeling Puck look at her and she can't figure out why he suddenly is. Okay, maybe it wasn't actually that new of a thing for him to do. But with such constant frequency it certainly was and she has no idea why. Though she doesn't have time to think about that. She has lots of problems and the one she should take on first is this one of her new reputation as it's affecting more people.)

So she tells Finn that they have to solve this. She needs him to be on board with doing anything they have to, to get their status back. She doesn't explain that in doing so the rest of the people in glee would get harassed less too and therefore that was another good reason to do it. But shouldn't saving himself from being humiliated and her from it be enough?

He does seem to work at it, even if his suggestions are lame. Going to Ms. Pillsbury for advice on how to be cool? Really? But okay, she'll go with it. She needs this to change.

The way people have been treating her, looking at her, hurts. It serves as a constant reminder of what her life has become now, what it will probably always be from now on. She used to be unhappy with her life, always playing the role of the popular, bitchy girl and perfect head cheerleader. And even though she's miraculously still the head cheerleader, she misses her old life already. This life was a whole new form of unhappy, one void of perks or even hope. No matter what her life seems to consist of, she always seems to be wishing for the things she can't have.

-o-o-o-

Puck had sat by and done nothing for a long time now. The first things he had done after finding out about the baby seemed like big mistakes. Like telling the glee kids who apparently couldn't keep their mouths shut since Quinn's condition somehow made it to the gossipy ears of the Jewfro freak.

So he'd stayed inactive, hoping that actually giving things a little more thought would make his next actions good ones. During this time of doing nothing, he observes a hell of a lot. Despite the fact that Finn never mentions stuff to him about the baby or what's going on with Quinn and him (though he really wishes he would even though he knows it'd feel sucky to hear about from his best friend), he's pretty sure he's figured some stuff out.

Like, that time last week where they were in the smaller groups, he's pretty sure he figured out that what's going on between Finn and Rachel really bothers Quinn. He knows (or at least hopes) it doesn't have anything to do with her really wanting Finn since it never seemed like (to him) that she was really that into the guy. But he gets that it sucks to want the attention of someone who doesn't seem to want you back (he's been feeling a lot of that lately himself). And he kind of sees the same thing in Rachel, which brings him to his current decision. If one of the things that's weighing on Quinn's mind when she has so much going on now that everyone knows she's preggers is Finn's interest in Rachel, then he figures he'd eliminate that one thing by dating Rachel.

Yeah, he knows that dating one girl doesn't show another that he likes her. But he hasn't been doing anything for a while now and he's tired of not doing anything. Plus, Rachel seems as bummed by the Quinn/Finn relationship as he's been lately and it's been a while since he's even made out with anyone so he figures, what the hell.

Plus, his mom recently made mention of him finding a nice Jewish girl, which made him feel pretty guilty. Because not only is the girl he wants not Jewish, but if said girl never wants him back and he never gets to be with her, he's still having a kid with her. Thus making his mom's first grandkid part gentile. He can't tell his mom the truth yet, which is another thing he feels guilty about, so he decides maybe he could give her a nice memory of him dating someone that fit her biggest criteria for an appropriate girl for him. And Rachel has that one criterion.

Day one of dating Rachel goes well enough. She lets him make out with her (which is especially nice since it prevents her from talking to him) and is completely okay with briefly meeting his mom. She's even cool enough to mention her Jewishness in said brief conversation so that part goes kind of as well as it could.

But no one seems to care that they're dating. And Quinn seems to have too much on her mind to notice. Or maybe, he worries, she just doesn't care (even though the fact that she's with Finn has been killing him).

Then, thank God for Rachel, she gives him the kind of opportunity he was looking for with all this- an opportunity to do something that can't turn out bad for him, something he can't screw up. Rachel wants him to perform a solo. He's cool with the concept. He's awesome so he can totally kick-ass at a solo. Rachel seems pretty desperate though so he hopes that she doesn't take this move as actual dedication to their relationship. But despite that worry, he has to go through with this.

This whole dating Rachel thing, he knew it wasn't his best idea and was likely to blow up in his face just like everything else had. But this whole singing thing, it didn't seem like he could possibly go wrong here.

He tells the glee club he chose Neil Diamond because he's a great Jew, or some crap like that. Actually, he's so not a Neil fan even if the guy is Jewish. But he knows he told Quinn about the only situations he'd sing Neil in and so he goes with it. And he sings to and for her. He just hopes she notices that like this, everything he's been doing is all about her, no matter how stupid some of those things have been.

-o-o-o-

Quinn's been so wrapped up in all of her problems that she's a day later than everyone else to hear that Puck is dating Rachel- something Santana tells her just before glee practice with disgust. She tries to act like it doesn't mean anything to her, because as far as everyone knows, it shouldn't. But, "Why would he date her?" won't stop playing in her head.

She doesn't know what to think of anything Puck has done since he found out she's pregnant and then he says that he wants to play something. He says it's his own tribute to a Jewish icon.

And he starts playing Neil Diamond, "Sweet Caroline." He doesn't play Neil Diamond for just anyone, refuses to look that stupid unless it matters. And he looks at her and the lyrics kind of fit for them ("_Where it began, I can't begin to know when  
But then I know it's growing strong_" "_hands, touching hands"_) and it seems unlikely that anyone else in the room would know why he normally would never play Neil Diamond. And maybe she's jumping to conclusions or assuming too much, but doesn't it mean that he's playing for her?

At that thought, she can't help the stunned, smiling, stupor that settles over her. The guy who's here now, singing and making this gesture, it's the guy who she had thought he really was, the one she wanted to be with (and not the one who broke her heart).

After realizing that him singing was probably for her, she starts to think about some of the other stuff he's done- like dating Rachel. Maybe those things were for her too. And then, it becomes kind of clear, in dating Rachel, he's keeping Rachel away from Finn. She hasn't noticed Rachel trying to get close to Finn these last couple days and therefore hasn't worried about Finn and her once. Sure, some of the other stuff he had done like spilling her secret had been pretty bad, but this was actually kind of really good. Maybe it wouldn't last long since Santana seemed to be really upset with this development in Puck's love life, but it was nice to have that weight lifted off her shoulders for now thanks to him.

Another weight is quickly added though as she gets slushied for the first time.

Finn actually seemed surprised by it when all those guys circled around them with slushies in their hands. She's far less trusting; she knew it was coming.

Finn doesn't talk about his decision regarding whether or not to chose glee or football with her and she doesn't try to influence his decision. She knows not that there's probably no saving her reputation so she leaves him to decide what he wants for himself. She doesn't expect him to chose wrong though. He chose what would protect him, what he possibly thought would protect her (though she's pretty sure he knew it wouldn't), but what all the other guys in glee knew was the wrong move.

(Puck comes, picks glee. He hugs Rachel and shares some little moment with her and Quinn starts to worry that she had been reading everything about him lately completely wrong. That none of the things he'd done had been for her. But then she finds him standing next to her, looks at her stupid sunglasses for a almost a minute, as if he's trying to hold her gaze through them and convey something to her. He can't of course because she's wearing sunglasses, but she gets the message anyway. And she settles on that she had things right the first time. And he came today because she was here.

This is definitely going to complicate everything. This, where he seems to be the guy she had…something with. But she has so many other things to deal with right now, she doesn't have time to spare it much thought.)

When she sees Finn the next day, after she's heard about how he almost slushied Kurt, they don't really talk much. It's pretty clear he's not happy with his decision, and she isn't either. He picked where to go yesterday selfishly and they both knew it.

-o-o-o-

Finn chose football over Quinn? Yeah, he realizes it's supposed to be between football and glee. But dude, that so wasn't the choice. It was for Mike and Matt, but for them it was football or Quinn (dur, this was going to be her only support soon enough). He chose Quinn (of course) and he can't believe Finn didn't.

He tries to make it clear to Quinn, as subtly as possible given all of the glee kids are right there with them, that he chose glee for her. But he's not sure if that worked at all because she was wearing sunglasses and he mostly felt like he was just staring at his reflection in them (he's lookin' real good today, FYI).

This whole dating Rachel thing is working out real well for him so far though. It's enabled him to do stuff for Quinn without looking like he is so no one's suspicious.

Then Rachel goes and breaks up with him. After three days. Three days! Sure, he wasn't planning on staying with her long. She talked a lot, it was annoying. But three days is kind of pathetic.

"I hope you didn't pick glee over football for me," she says.

Crap. Did she really think that? He forgot that she may have gotten that from his decision. "Why?" he asks cautiously.

"Because I don't think we're going to work out."

Of course they weren't. She was Rachel Berry, he was Puck. That was just all kinds of doomed. Still, it bruises his ego to hear it coming from her (especially first), "It's cool. I was gonna break up with you anyway."

"No you weren't."

He totally was cause she wasn't Quinn. He can't say that though so he goes the predictable route criticizing her prudish tendencies, which were honestly annoying.

Then he goes and gets stupid, mentioning that she likes Finn and that Finn and Quinn aren't breaking up. And Rachel's no idiot so he knows she's caught on to his bitterness there before she even calls him on it.

"You like her, don't you? I can see you staring at her when I'm staring at Finn."

Isn't that a coincidence? He figured out how much she liked Finn from catching her staring at him while he was staring at Quinn.

"Is that why you joined glee? To be closer to her?"

Damn. He knew there was a reason he didn't like being around smart girls. Well, there's no sense denying it, she clearly has it figured out. So he just tells her what he'd been figuring he should try and accept (before this whole baby thing started- that changed things) and what she should do herself a favor and accept too, "Like I said, they're never breaking up." And he's about to go on a rant about how long he's been waiting for them to, but he can't tell her any of that, can't let anyone know any of that. So he goes into another reason this has all been bothering him. He was never supposed to want Quinn like this. He doesn't want just one girl and it's honestly never made sense to him that he's been wanting just Quinn now for a long time. Or that he's been striking out with lots of girls real quick since he started wanting Quinn.

Then Rachel goes and gets all personal and he's not liking this conversation much anymore.

After he's blown her off, which he knows was a jerk move, he realizes that she had a point. For a while there, when Quinn was dating Finn and then again after things really fell apart between Quinn and him, he didn't do so well with girls/women. He got some one-time things, but anything more he'd completely screw it up really quick. And it was because he was desperate for those relationships to work, because he wanted to forget Quinn. He didn't want to be a one-girl guy for a girl who didn't want him.

(Though, that time when he had her, he was totally, shockingly cool with being a one-girl guy. Even if it lasted a really long time.)

Rachel's theory about him wanting stuff too much falls apart concerning Quinn lately though. Lately, he doesn't think he's been displaying wanting her enough. Take today, for example, where he went and tried to convey to her that he was there for her by looking at her. _Looking at her_. How lame was that? No, he's got to start doing better than that. He's got to start doing stuff that makes his intentions clearer. Because he wasn't lying when he told Rachel that Finn wasn't going to leave Quinn, not as long as he thought she was having his kid. So if he wants to be with Quinn, wants to have his kid acknowledged as his kid, then he's got to make Quinn want to do both those things too, got to make her want him. Because that's the only way Quinn's going to end up broken up from Finn short of just revealing the truth to the guy (which he's not doing, then Quinn would just hate him and that wasn't anywhere close to what he wanted).

So, he's got to start a new mission: Make Quinn want him to be his baby's dad.

-o-o-o-

Quinn's day has been awful.

She hasn't gotten slushied, but Finn's in a terrible mood over the situation. They barely talked when she saw him earlier. Then she ran into some members of the glee club and they were friendly despite being in ponchos, which they all know they're wearing because her fallen status made them all vulnerable to an attack again. If she hadn't gotten pregnant and had that news get out to the rest of the school then they wouldn't be checking around every corner for a slushie and yet, they're nice to her. It makes her feel even more guilty than she already does (and given what her life has become, she already feels so guilty all the time).

And then the day gets even worse by one of the very few things she has left getting taken away from her.

Apparently, Coach Sylvester is no longer in her unusually happy mood because she marches up to her (in the hallway with everyone milling around of all places), demands she takes off her sunglasses and tells her, "You're off Cheerios. I can't have a pregnant girl on my squad. You're a disgrace."

And just like that Coach Sylvester walks away, leaving her to start crying in the hallway. She had been really tired of crying in front of people, but she just can't help it. Now, she only has two more things left to lose: Finn and her parents. Two things, both really important to her, and both, just like all the others, things she will surely have taken away from her by this situation she's in.

(She doesn't like to think about what got her to this situation in the first place though. Because if she does, she remembers that she hadn't regretted sleeping with Puck, not at first at least. She had wanted to- nothing pressuring or persuading her into it. So if she really thinks about it, she remembers that it's entirely her fault that she's in this place. And that's really not something she can handle right now.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn changes out of her cheer uniform before she even stops crying. Thankfully, she had picked up her dry cleaning before school this morning and had it in her car. (Okay, she kind of thought at some point she may need a change of clothes for this exact reason so she had been putting something in there every morning this week.) She leaves her uniform in Coach Sylvester's office, the woman can get it cleaned herself, and plans to return the others to her as soon as possible (well, all but one, she wants to have one to remember what she was).

And she walks the halls to go to glee practice in something other than her uniform for the first time that she can remember in forever. Actually, it may be the first time she's ever done this.

But at glee at least she starts to feel a little bit better. Finn is back and had worked out that the guys could rejoin football and be in glee. And he brought them all a treat for ditching them the day before.

She can't help but be devastated still because her life is still a mess. When Mr. Schue inquires about how she is and she mentions her state and what school's going to be like from now on, it does make her feel better that he says everyone's going to be there for her and that they all immediately get behind that. She really is going to have to figure out how to be a friend to these people as they have been to her.

(Also, Puck's eyes seem to be on her since she walked in the room and when everyone supports Mr. Schue's idea that she had friends in glee to lean on, he even smirks at her. She doesn't know what to do with that. She'd been avoiding dealing with him being part of this whole mess she's in, had too many other things to deal with and he just made everything even more confusing anyway. But he's been…different lately, and she thinks that the time to deal with him will be coming soon.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn goes home that day and for the first time in a while her parents see her out of her cheer uniform. She hadn't worn it on the weekends, though she had largely avoided them with the exception of church, but they hadn't seen her out of it on a weekday in weeks. She had been gaining her lost weight back these last few weeks and was even three pounds over her normal weight now. She felt heavier and knew that to her mother's discriminating eye she probably looked it too. So she kept her very supportive cheer uniform on to try and mask any of her weight gain. She doesn't have that option now though.

She spent the afternoon trying to come up with a reason for her quitting cheer. She couldn't say she was kicked off or her parents would be calling Coach Sylvester and finding out the truth. So she prepares a lie to feed them over dinner. She tells them that Coach Sylvester wanted the cheerleaders to choose between cheer and other extra curricular activities- which meant both glee and celibacy club. She explains that she's needed in glee- without her they wouldn't qualify for competition. And as president of the club, she's needed for her celibacy club as well. She also adds on that Coach Sylvester has banned them from praying before any performance as she doesn't believe in religion, thus if she can't pray it'd tarnish _their_ image as Christians. She then claims that she quit the team in protest and given her natural talent and the other girls' lack of talent, it's only a matter of time until Coach Sylvester concedes her new rules to get her back on the team.

Her parents aren't pleased by her not being head cheerleader, even if it's only temporary, but with all of the things she's standing for in doing so they tell her, "Good job, sweetie," before returning to ignoring her.

Quinn lays in bed that night and thinks about how in about another day she'll officially be fourteen weeks pregnant. Which means that she's known she's pregnant for nine weeks. In those nine weeks, it's seemed like she lost everything and gained nothing.

Wait. In another day, she'll be fourteen weeks pregnant. She hadn't even read about what would be happening in her fourteenth week, she hadn't read her thirteenth week either. She'd completely forgotten about it with everything that had been going on. So she gets out of bed, turns on her computer, and goes to the bookmarked page.

Apparently there was an actual name for that last abdominal pain she felt- round ligament pain, it's a pretty common occurrence during pregnancy from last week on. It's also safe to assume that she'll make it full term since she's made it this far in the pregnancy (though, she remembers Addie's story and knows- fears- that it's not a certainty).

Her baby has been growing too. Apparently now she's starting to look more like a baby and less like a little blob. She should be almost an ounce now.

No. Not her baby. Not she. It. She's got to start sticking to her mantra. It's not her baby, she's giving her away.

And then she reads on, the words on the screen calling to her. It's so easy to forget the things she should remember. Especially when she comes to the words, "By now your tummy is starting to look a little pregnant. If nothing else you look like you have started to gain a little weight. People start suspecting something may be up because it looks like you've added a few pounds." Crap. Most people know she's pregnant and that was enough of a worry, but from now on apparently is when people start suspecting that any extra weight, in that very telling abdominal area, is pregnancy.

Her parents barely said two words to her for the rest of dinner after she made her Cheerio's announcement. It was almost like they forgot she was there. But she didn't want them to forget about her, she didn't want them to find out and abandon her even more than they already seemed to. She wished that they were the people that they pretended to be, that they had the happy family they were always trying to convince people they had. If only then, she may not lose them.

She goes back to bed and returns to thinking of how she's lost so much and will lose everything.

(Her hand will eventually wander to her stomach and she'll think, she hasn't lost everything. And she's right, she hasn't, but she made her decision, and she will lose _everything_.

She cries herself to sleep. Again.)

(Here's something you should know: When she thinks about all the things in her life that she wishes were different, how things are with Puck is closer to the top of the list than she'd care to admit. She wishes that Sunday, that day after, didn't happen with him the way that it did. Maybe then none of this would be so bad, if she had him through it all. Or, maybe, she should just wish that she never offered to watch his sister and never got to know him, never ended up wanting him. But after everything, she still can't quite bring herself to wish that. So she settles on wanting things to be different, not undone entirely.)

* * *

**A/N: I hope you enjoyed reading the chapter!**

**Next chapter title:** _And he's never been able to learn from his mistakes, so he can't understand why his heart always breaks _from Billy Joel's "Angry Young Man."

The next chapter will be covering "Wheels" through "Sectionals" no matter how long the chapter ends up being. I'm through with writing the "Wheels" bit and it's already nearly fourteen pages so it's looking it will be even longer than usual. If that's the case, I'll probably split it up and post in two parts like I've done in the past. Unless everyone wants it posted as one giant chapter- let me know what you think.

**Reviews equal love so please leave one if you have the time:)**


	9. Chapter 7

**A/N: **Well, that was quite a long span of time in between chapters, let's not do that again, shall we? (Hopefully.) Okay, some very important things:

**1. Thank you so much to the wonderful people reading this story!** I have no authority to do so, but I'm declaring you the best readers ever. Truly, your continued support for this story has been very greatly appreciated as I've struggled to find time to write it.

**2**. This chapter is **WAY** longer than any of the previous ones. Enjoy! - It just kept getting away from me given that there was quite a lot of Quick in the episodes it covers-"Wheels" through "Sectionals."

**3. Very Important: **Some of you may have already read the note I posted on my profile way back at the start of July, but for those of you that didn't read it, some problems came up with the timing in this story. Taking a close look at the episodes it became apparent that Ryan Murphy and his two writers progressed Quinn's pregnancy faster than time progressed for anyone else (and her stomach grew oddly as well). Also, as I wrote the last chapter, I didn't consult a calendar to make sure the timing I was writing in it was consistent with future timings in the story (as, by the early September conception time I gave Quinn would make her due in early June) and I screwed things up. The story isn't going to get hugely changed, but there do need to be small tweaks to rectify some things. **A.** Quinn's progress in her pregnancy is going to be rolled back two weeks (to be twelve weeks along) for the end of the last chapter (something I'll be editing as soon in the next day or so). This will mean making "Rhodes Not Taken" span one week instead of the two it currently does in the chapter (and getting a little vague with some other times) and having Quinn initially suspicious of the gender of the baby as ten weeks is too soon to tell the sex (something she would have read in her pregnancy research), but quickly giving in to the idea that it's a girl. **B. **Though weeks will pass in this chapter and the next, I'm going take some creative license to not mention where Quinn is in her pregnancy so much, so that I can have Thanksgiving occur in her early-ish second trimester and December holidays in her mid second trimester. This doesn't mean that by the weeks that'll pass she'd actually be much further along, it just means that to achieve certain plot points we're going to kind of "ignore" about three weeks of her pregnancy. Mid-way through next chapter we'll pick up with the specifics (her being near mid-second trimester though really by the end of this chapter she would be) and the rest of her pregnancy should progress in time with the story. Sorry for this alteration and any confusion. If you get confused with it in this chapter or the next couple, please feel free to ask any clarifying questions (or any others for that matter).

Okay, I'll stop rambling and let all you lovely readers get on to reading.

* * *

**Cheated Hearts**

* * *

**VII. _And he's never been able to learn from his mistakes, so he can't understand why his heart always breaks_**

(Here's something you should know: Having his dad walk out on him left Puck with some issues. And they always seem to get to him at the worst of times.)

Quinn goes to school on Monday expecting it to be a horrible day (it is).

She's had so many things on her mind all weekend and it feels like none of her worries will leave her alone. It also feels like she has so many worries at this point that she can barely remember them all.

A new worry got added to her list on Saturday though and it is one that has taken precedence over the others for the moment. She got her doctor's bill in the mail. She immediately scraped her money together for the check-up. But the sonogram was hundreds of dollars. She doesn't have that. Her parents always claimed they had a trust fund set up for both her and her sister, but they also always told them that they'd get that on their wedding day (and, more specifically, when they settle down with a man they like). Her sister never told her how much it was, but it doesn't matter for her now anyway, her situation means she's never getting it. As for what she usually did for money, well, she'd just tell her parents what she wanted to buy and they'd give her the cash or credit card. When it was a larger amount they'd go to the safe in her dad's office, but the cash or credit was always just a little prompting from her parents away. She obviously can't ask for this though and she can't think of another reason that she'd need so much money that they'd give it to her.

On Sunday, as she's freaking out about the bill, she considers sneaking into her dad's office, trying to guess the combination to his safe, and taking the money she needs and trying to replace it sometime later so they won't notice. But it would be just her luck that they'd immediately notice.

By Monday, she's completely freaked out by the bill. She doesn't mean to take it out on Finn, especially when he's come there out of being thoughtful. But she can't help it, she's panicked. And before she knows it the words, "Chose the right guy to have a baby with," are slipping out of her mouth. She knows she shouldn't be saying stuff like that. If Finn gave it a second of thought he'd be suspicious. But it is true. She needs him to step up and be the guy she expected him to be when she realized she could lean on him. She got him involved in this mess, put up with the guilt she felt over doing so, all because she wanted someone in this with her that would be there for her, that would help her. And lately, he really hadn't been that guy. She still wishes he would be though, because she still really needs someone.

(When she walks out, telling Finn that watching the Cheerios rehearse does hurt too much, she's not really just talking about watching the Cheerios practice. Lately, everything hurts too much.)

-o-o-o-

Puck is pretty sure things are going to start going a lot better for him.

He thinks this for a few reasons:

One: He's pretty sure that the last two things he did (the song and picking glee over football) turned out good. No, she wasn't throwing herself in his arms or even talking to him actually. But there definitely weren't any bad outcomes to it and that's a big improvement from his actions of earlier.

Two: He's been paying attention again. Paying attention was what clued him in to stuff before and led him to his last things that turned out good, so he figured he's got to continue that. In doing so he's noticed something else he can help out with. It seems pretty clear she needs money. He doesn't actually have any, but he's gotten some for his family before when they needed it, he can certainly do it again.

Three: She's fighting with Finn. Yay!

So he's got to give her some money at some point, make a gesture that he's a helluva lot better than Finn and that she should let him take care of her and their baby. Now, he only needs to figure out how and when.

-o-o-o-

When she thinks about it, Quinn feels awful for her contribution to the "Artie's fine on his own" move in glee club. She's been an outcast lately, she's learning what it feels like, and she didn't think she'd do it to anyone again. But she had had other things on her mind and wasn't even thinking. Joining in just slipped out.

Later, she smiles at Artie and waves in the hallway as they cross paths. It's not nearly enough to compensate for what she said, but this whole being nice and being a friend thing is new to her. Besides, she still has too many worries right now to add this to the list. Next time an opportunity to make up for what she said comes up, she'll just have to take advantage of it. She doesn't have the time or energy to create a moment like that herself.

Especially now that they're doing a bake sale. A bake sale! Could Mr. Schue get any lamer? She asked herself that too soon as now they're going to be spending ample time in wheel chairs and doing a wheel chair number.

She's so surprised by the announcement that she actually leans up from Finn's shoulder. She had been cuddling up to him in an attempt to make her anxiety/stress/fear dissipate just a little. And sometimes, it does help. Having someone right there who will hold her (even if he keeps feeling so much like the wrong person lately).

From the tone of the room when a bake sale was mentioned before, she got the distinct feeling no one knew how to bake. Which means that making stuff for it will probably fall to her as she does know how to bake (it wasn't like it was that hard). So on top of everything else she has going on and has to deal with, she gets to add a bake sale to her list. Great.

-o-o-o-

Picking a time and place didn't work out for Puck so well. When it came down to it all he could think of was that he needed Quinn to be alone to give her the money. He was going to hand over all his money to show he was really in this with her and doing so didn't require anything more than privacy, right? Puck thought about it for a whole day and couldn't come up with anything else so he decided that the next time he saw her alone, he'd give Quinn the money.

His opportunity came the day after the bake sale announcement was made. About fifteen minutes after school got out Puck was heading to his truck in the parking lot and noticed a familiar car still there. So he headed back inside and started a search for the owner. It took him for freaking ever to find her. It's not like they have a really big school, but he's pretty sure he's never been in this part with kitchens. He didn't even know they offered anything like Home Economics or Cooking as classes.

Puck kind of didn't plan anything he was going to say. So he started with the first thought in his head (besides,_ she's hot_), "I didn't know we had a Home Ec room." She's clearly doing something here and he could probably figure it out given the things she has laid out, but he asks the obvious question anyway, "What's all this?"

She felt the corners of her mouth lift at the sound of his voice and immediately chastised herself. _He broke your heart, he broke your heart, and you will __not__ let him know that_, she tells herself. She couldn't let him get to her. She had noticed that lately he seemed like the guy she had thought he was. But that couldn't matter, he couldn't be that guy, not now. Now was too late, now him being that guy just made everything more complicated. She tells herself to act like this is any other conversation with any other person. She tries to resist glancing at him (and fails) as she responds, "Ingredients for cupcakes for this stupid bake sale."

He agrees the bake sale is stupid and has a few thoughts to contribute about it. But he didn't come here to talk about the bake sale, or anything with glee. He came here for one purpose- to prove he's better than Finn. So he does what feels right and grabs her hand and presses all the money he has into her palm.

She takes her hand back quickly, and immediately prompts him about the cash in her hand, trying to remain indifferent to him, "What's this?"

"It's what I had left of my pool cleaning money- after I bought dip and nunchucks," he answers honestly. He adds on explaining with a confident smirk, "I was getting that you kinda need money. For our kid."

"For _my_ kid," she promptly corrects. She knows the baby is technically his too, but she's the one who has to deal with everything, whose life it effects way more. And if he's involved, if he's the guy she thought he was, her life just gets harder. So she has to make sure he walks away from this. "Eighteen dollars," she says, unimpressed. It really wouldn't be enough money, but even though the gesture does means something, she knows she's right to say it like it doesn't because she needs this to go away right now.

Right. Yeah, he'd gotten that that was her feeling on it. But he's put some thought into this and he's not giving up that easy. He volleys strategically, "How much has Finn given you?"

Damn it. She almost smiles because he had a good point and part of her was happy he did. If only everything was different, she'd want him to be doing exactly the type of thing he clearly is- being there for her. But things aren't different and him being like this only makes everything more complicated. "Just stop," she begs. She sighs a little and re-explains, a little tightness to her voice, forcing the words out, "I told you before, I don't care if that baby comes out with a Mohawk, I will go to my grave swearing it's Finn's." She looks away from him and shoves the money back in his hand before she turns away (strokes her hair to distract herself from the feel of his skin).

He sighs. Crap. That was not good and he certainly couldn't let things end here like that, on such a bad note. The mention of his Mohawk reminds him of _that _night. He smiles as he combines it with a thought of their baby. He touches her shoulder (because she's right there and they're all alone, he can't not touch her) and comments, "It would be pretty awesome if it came out with a Mohawk."

She smiles and swears in her head because she knows that shouldn't make her smile. But mentions of Mohawks remind her of _that_ night, which reminds her of everything, and suddenly she can't resist a moment of being completely real with him. She quips, "You are such an egghead."

He smirks, happy she remembered his sister's nickname (happy she remembered _them_) even if the name was totally inaccurate in his opinion. He denies, only sort of meaning it, "I'm not."

And he's standing there, all close and just looking at her and if something doesn't interrupt in the next few seconds, Quinn knows she's going to be in trouble. So, on impulse, she reaches for the nearest object (very appropriately it's an egg) and smashes it over his head. Him standing there with egg dripping all over him is priceless and she can barely fight descending into a fit of laughter- which she gives into after he starts to fight back and completely ruin her clothes, hair, everything (seriously, she found flour and coco powder all over her for the rest of the day).

For these brief seconds where they're slinging flour and coco powder at each other, she's not thinking about a single one of her worries. She's simply here, having fun, with Puck. It feels so familiar and easy and nice.

But of course easy things never last long for her these days and suddenly they've stopped throwing stuff at each other and he's _real_ close, touching her face and her arm and looking at her very seriously. And she's just standing there. Knowing what her lack of movement, lack of objection means, she bites her lip for a second. She's not supposed to be doing this- standing here knowing he's going to kiss her and not doing a damn thing to stop it. Not in her current situation, not after everything that's happened between them, she's really not supposed to be doing this. But here she is, not objecting, not running, just waiting (and they both know it).

Finn saves Quinn from what she's sure on reflection would have been a very stupid act on her part.

As soon as Puck hears Finn's "What the hell?" he stops touching the girl in front of him, the one having his kid, the one he was about to kiss, the one he can't stop thinking about (the one he's pretty sure he has some very serious feelings for), because she's not his to touch (still).

He could make a scene here, get the truth out in the open, but he knows that'd be a real jackass move and he's really trying to not screw this up. So he says he's going to go change and tries to walk past Finn like everything is normal.

"We're baking." Quinn can't believe that Finn had bought that. Though it did help that Puck got out of there directly following that and didn't leave Finn time to really get more curious. Thinking about what excuse Puck gave to leave, she realizes, she really should get cleaned up too as she's a complete mess. So Quinn quickly gives Finn a few instructions to get the baking back on track and tells him she's going to clean up a little, she'll be right back.

As Quinn reaches the nearest girls bathroom, the door to the boys bathroom next to it swings open and out walks an only slightly cleaned up Puck.

He smiles catching sight of her and accuses, "Hey, you ruined my shirt."

"Well that is truly tragic since it's by far the closest one to a decent one you own," she returns with a smile (not noticing that she's smiling with him again).

"I'd defend the rest of my clothes," he begins and shrugs, "but this kind of was my nicest shirt." He's smiling at her still and what he said made her laugh a little- something that still makes him feel awesome for being responsible for. He adds on, daring to bring up their past despite the bad way they ended, "But I guess I kind of had it coming. You did promise you'd get me back for leaning on my horn outside your parents house that one time."

The horn thing that got her parents attention and had been his way of getting her back for the tomato she threw at him; she remembers it easily. She doesn't want to dwell on the past though so she responds, "Yeah I did have to get you back for that at some point." Before he can get any ideas about retaliating, she gestures to her clothes and adds, "And since you obviously got me back for what I started I guess that makes it my turn again."

"I guess I'll start wearing only clothes I don't like just in case you ruin more of them with your payback," he says with a smirk, letting her know that he's fine with absolutely any kind of interaction she wants to have with him.

She glances away and finds herself biting her lip again, trying to refrain from certain actions, thoughts, and words. She understood what he was doing, but why she wasn't even supposed to be talking to him is starting to come back to her.

He doesn't want to screw this up and he figures he's probably been lucky that she hasn't returned to reinforcing the idea that she's having their baby with Finn. So he decides to end it so he gets to leave her on a good note. He tells her, "Well I've got to go see if I can salvage this shirt." He starts to head off down the hall, but turns around and calls to her, "Make sure you check your pockets before you wash those clothes." And then he's around the corner before he can see what her reaction may be.

Quinn's face scrunches because that was a very odd thing to say. Unless… she reaches into the pockets on her smocked top and finds eighteen dollars. She smiles. Eighteen dollars doesn't mean anything compared to the amount needed for the baby just while she's pregnant. But at the same time, eighteen dollars means a lot, and she knows it.

She heads for the bathroom knowing that everything was indeed getting more complicated. But for the first time, she wasn't so sure that that was a bad thing.

-o-o-o-

Quinn tries not to think about her moment with Puck or the eighteen dollars that she tucked safely out of the way in her wallet. She really does have more pressing things to worry about than what's going to happen with her and Puck or Puck and their daughter (she hadn't even told him it's a girl and she's starting to think that she really should let him know).

Finn's being just impossible lately. He's not trying to make them work, he's not trying to be there for her, he's just giving up on everything. And he can't be like that because he's all she has and she needs help.

She gets kind of snippy with him. Okay maybe it was more bitchy and harsh than snippy, but she's in the middle of many crisis' here. And if he can't even make a bake sale successful how in the world is he going to help her?

(Its here that she starts to wonder how much longer it will be before he simply walks away. And what will she do when she loses him?)

-o-o-o-

Puck feels like a total winner. First, yesterday totally went well. Secondly, he took Quinn's side in front of Finn and the guy didn't get suspicious at all. Third, since Quinn's still so hung up on money and hasn't tried to give him back the eighteen dollars he left her with, he's pretty sure that if he got more she'd keep it and therefore let him start taking care of her and his kid.

But then she gets all angry at Finn for not doing everything. The fact that Finn's not stepping up at all really seems to be bugging her. And honestly he's finding Finn's lack of effort surprisingly out of character for the guy. Something's got to be up with that.

He completely intends on finding a way to get Quinn a lot more money so he can be the one to take care of her and their baby, but as he's rolling down the hallway with Finn and Finn starts complaining about the way Quinn's been treating him lately, Puck can't help the stuff he starts saying from there.

"It's like she treats me like I can't do anything right," Finn complains.

"Yep," Puck says, clearly agreeing with that opinion. (His contempt for his best friend has been growing for months; he can't help it coming out once in a while. Especially now that the guy is playing baby daddy to his kid.) To Finn's look of confusion, he elaborates, "I'm just saying, she has a point. You are kind of an idiot."

"Nice support dude. Whatever happened to bros before hoes?"

Oh if Finn only knew how long ago it was that he violated that rule. (And despite the fact that he'd been living it for quite a while, he had yet to fully realize that the problem with that rule was that some girls were worth anything- even hurting your best friend).

He's not about to mess up some of the few things he knows Quinn wants so he doesn't take the honest route with the conversation. Instead, he retorts as he thinks Quinn would want him to, "You've got a baby on the way bro, and you haven't done spit to take care of it."

"Like you'd do any different."

Okay, it's like Finn's begging him to come right out with the truth. But telling the truth wouldn't leave Quinn with any good feelings about him, he knows it. So he keeps pretending while honestly swearing, "Damn straight."

"How? No body's hiring."

How to make money when it seems like none can be made is a situation he's become very familiar with over the years thanks to his mom's habit. He rattles off easily, "Sell your Xbox, rob a bank, go all Robin Hood on this joint. Whatever it takes." He realizes as he's saying these things that he already sold his Xbox, so it's not an option. He can't rob a bank because he gave the last of his money to Quinn that left him in the hole for that kind of an operation because you'd need a weapon to rob a bank, right? As far as going all Robin Hood on this joint, he knows the computers are pretty secured to the desks in the labs and library and he doesn't know what else of value is lying around this place. So he's definitely going to have to find other ways to make money.

The fact that he now has no idea what to do and that Finn still seems completely unwilling to help the girl he thinks is having his kid really serves to piss him off more than the usual amount he always carries with him. So Puck finds himself turning his wheelchair into his best friends and accusing, "All I ever hear is you whining and crying about how hard this is on you. What about her?"

"Dude! You are so out of line. You don't know what I'm dealing with."

He doesn't know what he's dealing with? Like hell he doesn't. He loses it at that, "All I know is that you're a _punk_ who doesn't deserve to have Quinn as his girlfriend."

"You're a punk."

The next thing he knows, he's on the floor attempting to beat the crap out of Finn and Mr. Schue is trying to pull them apart. And as they stand there, Mr. Schue between them demanding to know what's going on, he remembers what he'd been trying to keep telling himself constantly over the last few months: nothing is Finn's fault. If he had just told Finn that he was interested in Quinn way back when he was getting to know her at Foster's while she was babysitting his sister, he would have never asked her out. He's his best friend, he would have stepped aside and wished him well and he knows it. So as much as he feels like hitting Finn once for every time he's touched or kissed Quinn, he knows he can't, and he knows he was just out of line in starting the fight. So he tries to make it all go away with what could possibly be his lamest lie ever (I'm just really stressed about the bake sale. I really like Artie.).

He grumpily gets his chair and fights his way through the gathered crowd. He hates that he's come to have so much contempt for his best friend even though he knows he shouldn't. He hates how it's always bubbling there, right beneath the surface. And even more, he hates that he just gave into it. If he gave into that impulse, what other bad habits would he eventually give into that would ruin him in some way? (He knew something bad would eventually come, something he'd do that would be wrong and that would hurt people. That was one certain thing he seemed to be able to count on in his life: that he would screw everything up.)

-o-o-o-

By the end of the school day, Puck has resolved that he's at a better place with Quinn now and he's not giving up on making it better, on getting her to accept his help, until he actually does mess it all up (which hasn't come yet).

It took him two entire class periods (of which classes he's not quite sure), but he manages to come up with a plan. As the ones selling the bake sale stuff, the glee kids have full access to the money they raise. So if he can sell stuff, he can take the money and give it to Quinn. Then when people come asking about the box he can just lie and say he thought someone else had it, there will be a fruitless search for it, and they'll come to the conclusion that it was stolen (without finding out that he did it). It means Artie wouldn't get his special bus, which he does feel a little bit bad about, but Quinn and his kid are way more important than Artie so oh well.

The problem then became, how does one get high school students to spend lots of money on baked goods?

That answer comes to him pretty easily. He hates calling Mr. Tobolowsky, but he knows the guy is fruity enough to buy a sob story and give him a discount- which he really needs since he had to swipe some money from his mom's stash just to pull this whole thing off. Once he has the marijuana, he gets to baking- quite successfully, it's way easier than he thought.

And just like that he's making tons of money for Quinn and their kid. Things are looking up.

-o-o-o-

A past due notice, already? But she just got the bill on Saturday and today was only Thursday. Damnit. This was happening way too fast and Quinn feels the pressure weigh down on her even more than before.

And once again, she takes her increased fear out on Finn. She knows she shouldn't do it, really. But she was out of things to do. If she got a job anywhere in town her parents would find out and then find out the reason why she got a job. If she got a job out of town she'd be spending so much time away that her parents would probably notice, find out where she'd been, and find out she's pregnant. She couldn't come up with a way for her to get money and still keep her parents in the dark about her situation. So she really needed Finn to step up. (She needed _anyone _to help.)

Quinn's actually glad that when she finds Finn he's with Rachel. Rachel has a way of getting things done that need to get done. Plus she's always looking to prove how good she is to Finn and if she takes on the task of helping him get a job/money to do that again, well, that could be beneficial to both her and Rachel so she really hopes the girl recognizes that opportunity.

She doesn't realize it until she's stormed out, but she threatened Finn that they'd be over if he didn't figure something out. She'd been thinking of letting him get out of this situation she'd put him in pretty much since she started it. But she'd never made a small attempt to actually follow through on it like she just had. So far he'd proven that he wouldn't be able to do anything, which meant that a break up really did seem likely if she stayed true to her threat. Maybe it's about time that she lets go of him.

The thought of that, letting him go, being alone, has her nearly racing back to Finn and apologizing for every bitchy, demanding thing she's said to him lately. She wants to be strong enough to let him go because he doesn't deserve anything she's done to him, but in the end, she's still not strong enough.

But then, she starts to waver again. She sits there being swarmed by students as she sells cupcakes next to Puck and starts to wonder what things would be like if she could trust him. If she could really trust him, she's pretty sure she would be able to muster up the courage to let Finn go, and she's starting to think that maybe in those circumstances she'd be better off that way too.

(At the end of the day, she feels more confused than ever. Lately, it's seemed like she can't go ten seconds without finding reason to change her mind about absolutely anything.

She wishes she had someone to tell her what to do. Or even just someone to talk to would be so nice.)

-o-o-o-

When all of his "enhanced" baked goods are sold, Puck counts the money and smiles to himself. All his life he's screwed things up- like getting in a fight with Finn the other day despite knowing that the guy didn't deserve it. But here he is, with a ton of cash for his…for Quinn and their kid. He came through, did what was needed. Sure, maybe it was thanks to turning to his crutches: lying and crime. But he still did it. And lately, he'd been doing some other good stuff too- like giving her the eighteen dollars, making her laugh, making her smile. So maybe he isn't so much of a screw up anymore. Maybe that's a quality of his that's officially past tense.

On that thought, he figures that if he's going to continue to not be a screw up, perhaps he should put some real thought into what he's going to say to Quinn when he gives her the money. He needs to make it clear that despite being sixteen and pretty terrified of every part of this situation, he wants her and he wants their kid. He thinks about it all night, but in the end nothing sounds good enough. He ends up just hoping that the right thing will come when the right time comes.

(It makes him even more nervous that he's going to have to rely on hope. Hope hasn't been so good to him in the past.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn is genuinely surprised when Puck calls after her in the hall the next day. Given his actions lately, it makes complete sense that he'd seek her out for anything. But she's so absorbed in her mind, in her worries, that just about anything that actually draws her away from them for a fraction of a second is a surprise.

She turns to his call expectantly (hoping he had something to say or do like he did the other day in the home economics room).

Puck catches up to her and figures he'd better dive right in before something bad happens between them or someone interrupts. He speaks quickly as he pulls out the money, "I cracked open the piggy bank. It's for you, well, it's for it."

"It is a she," she finds herself saying carefully (touched by his gesture) and feeling the corners of her mouth tugging upward just a little.

A she? A daughter? Well, that was…something. "Cool," he breathes out, too surprised by the announcement to think of anything else. A daughter. Thinking of a daughter reminds him of taking care of his little sister and taking care of his sister reminds him of the reason he's had to do so much: his dad walking out on them. On that thought, he says referencing their first conversation about their daughter, "I told you I wasn't a deadbeat."

Yeah, she knows. She honestly never thought he would be. But she's in a situation here and it's too late for him to just walk right into it. She really can't even handle the thought of everything getting more difficult as it would when the real truth came out. So she says regretfully, "Look Puck, this is really sweet, but-"

He notices her tone and doesn't like where this is going so he interrupts promising, "I can get more." He thinks about the things that have been on his mind lately and the things he wanted to express to her and figures he's got to try now. He begins, trying to hide his nervousness, "People call me a screw up because… I think school is for suckers. But I got ambition. Get us a house, some stuff, furniture." Okay, that didn't sound so smart. So he keeps it simple and tells her what he's really been thinking, why he's been trying to make her see that he's good. "We could be a family," he tells her, hoping she remembered how much family meant to him and willing to explain it if she didn't.

She gets it. And the word, the idea of a family has certain particular appeal to her. So all of this (him) is tempting. Her mind is a mess though and she doesn't know what she thinks at any given moment any more. She doesn't trust herself to make the right choices or do the right thing, not when it comes to big decisions like this. (She'd been making so many mistakes lately and given how many worries they created for her, they were impossible to forget.) "Finn is your best friend," she reminds him, because she needs anything to make her think this is a bad path to take right now. Any reason that would remind her that she shouldn't trust the things she feels, and certainly shouldn't act on them.

He's been thinking of this for a while. He tells her, "He'd be pissed for a while but then he'd realize he doesn't have to deal with any of this and bake me a damn cake." That was a complete exaggeration. He's pretty sure Finn's going to attempt to kick his ass (and he should probably let him). But he's tired of caring about the consequences, he just wants all of the pretending to be over.

Well that wasn't true, but she knew what he meant. He didn't care about what would happen with Finn, he just wanted their daughter to be _their_ daughter.

The stack of money in his hand, the size, the arrangement, it looked familiar and had been nagging at her since he took it out. And now, as she recalled the other things he'd done that week, trying to think of what she should do here, she realized why it looked so familiar. "You stole from the cupcake fund," she accuses knowingly.

"No I didn't," he automatically denies. She raises an eyebrow at him and he used to be better at lying to people. He caves and admits, "Fine, I did." He knows she wouldn't like him stealing so he races to explain, "I made all those cupcakes. I'm all about being a team player, but my family comes first." (And he hopes she understands that he's including her in that family and really hopes that she wants to be a part of it as much as he's come to realize he wants her to.)

Well she can't take the money. She does need it and the gesture was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for her. But stealing is wrong and she's especially not going to do anything wrong to Artie who doesn't deserve it (she had vowed after having involved Finn in her problems, she would never knowingly do anything horrible to anyone who didn't deserve it again).

She doesn't want to make all of this progress with Puck go away though by not taking the money. Lately, he's been exactly the guy she thought he was and the one that she really needs right now. But she's not ready to jump into anything with him again either (she can still feel so sharply how it felt when it all fell apart last time). So she tells him honestly, "I get it." She places a hand on his chest (because it'd been so long since she touched him and she finally felt like doing so again), and continues honestly, "And I'm sorry. I should have never called you a Lima loser. You're not. You're special and romantic and…a good enough person to realize we're not going to take money from a friend in a wheel chair."

Next, she planned on telling him that she was really horribly confused about everything and needed time to think. And he shouldn't take that as a bad thing at all. She just had a lot of stuff to think about and maybe he could talk to her about some of it, help her try to find clarity.

Next, he planned on arguing that Artie could totally find the money another way or they could just volunteer to put on another bake sale and she could keep the money since it seemed like she needed to.

But they're both interrupted from the things they want to say next by Finn calling, "Hey," as he rolled down the hall towards them.

Then Finn lets her know that he finally came through (with Rachel's help). And somehow he's already managed to get a check for her (she suspects Rachel or someone gave him a loan). And it's here that they're faced with reality. The truth of the moment is that she's Finn's and as far as everyone knows so is the baby. And she's not going to jump at the chance to change that, which he gets, and so they are stuck.

As she's wheeled away on Finn's lap, she's thinks she's never regretted her current situation more.

As he watches her leave with his best friend, he feels a familiar ache settle over him. He's been through this kind of moment before. But this time at least she's looking back at him like she dislikes this moment as much as he does. And as much as this sucks, that's an improvement.

(Later, when he presents the money to the club, she'll smile at him and he'll smile at her. And for minutes, fractions of minutes, like these, it seems like a certainty that they're headed toward something. Or, more accurately, back to something they were before.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn thinks her mother may know about her condition.

She'd noticed that her mother had been looking at her differently lately. But around week twelve, which she just finished, she had read that she'd start to actually look heavier (as opposed to just feeling heavier as she had been for a couple weeks) and given how her regular clothes do nothing to hold in the extra weight, she figured her mother's extra attention was out of thinking she was getting fat (like it usually was). But now, as she's at a party one of her father's higher up employees has thrown and she notices this certain glimmer in her mother's eye, something like concern, she starts to worry that her mother has found out the truth.

This moment came on Saturday afternoon and though she'd usually spend as much of her weekend out of her house as possible, she decided not to for the rest of this weekend. She decides this first because if her mother knows the truth then her time under this roof may be limited and though she's usually fled this place like it's the last one she wants to be, it is her _home_ and she doesn't know what she'd do without it. Second of all, she needs to stay around her mom more because she needs to figure out if her mother actually figured out the truth.

So she hangs around the house. She does her weekend homework in the kitchen rather than her room like she usually does. She spends Saturday night in the family room watching movies. And she keeps a close eye on her mother the entire time. There's definitely something there, in her mother's eye, something the woman knows or at least has been thinking.

By the end of the weekend Quinn resolves that she's probably just suspicious. And she really, truly hopes that she's right in thinking that her mother only suspects what's going on with her. Because if her mother did know the truth, she'd hope her mother would say something to her about it. How could she not? She's her daughter and she's pregnant, what kind of mother would knowingly let their daughter go through that alone?

But this is her family and as much as she'd like to hope her mother would actually be there for her, she knows better than to expect such things (though she has been praying for it, among many other things, every night since she found out that she's pregnant). Her family did not talk about bad things. They didn't talk about it when her sister nearly got held back in the eighth grade because she had ditched many, many classes. They didn't talk about how when her dad had a very young female secretary he just happened to suddenly have out of town over night business trips. They never mentioned her grandmother, the mother of her father that he never spoke to after she remarried an African American man within months of her husband dying. And when her grandmother who she never met died and that man she married came ringing their doorbell in an attempt to simply give her father a few mementos he thought he'd like to have, they didn't talk about the fact that he showed up, the fact that he was perfectly nice, or the fact that her father shut their front door in the man's face without saying a word, like he wasn't even there. Though she hoped her situation would be different because she was their daughter, Quinn knew, her situation was bad and at best she could probably only expect toleration of it, never, ever talking about it.

She needs so much to talk to someone about everything though. She doesn't know how to handle any of this and she's confused about absolutely everything. And she's never been close to her mother, spent a great deal of time disliking her, but she really, really hopes her mother will defy their practiced family tradition of silence and talk to her about this.

So though she had suspected that her mother only had an inkling about her condition, when her mother mentions at dinner on Sunday night that she'd be picking up her gown for the Chastity Ball tomorrow and she'd need to try it on, Quinn decides to figure out a way to test her mother's knowledge. The dress was measured when she was weighing a little less thanks to the morning sickness just starting to tapper off at that point, so there's no way it fits now that she's started gaining a little weight. And if she tires on a dress that fit perfectly a month ago with her mother and it doesn't fit, it seems like a really good opportunity to find out exactly how much her mother knows.

On Monday, she puts on the dress willingly. She hates how much bigger she's starting to look. Especially in a dress this color, she looks huge. But she can't put this off or talk her mother out of it, she needs to know now if her mother knows. Because if her mother knows the truth and isn't talking to her about it, then she supposes she knows whether or not those prayers were answered and maybe she can better prepare for the eventual horrible reaction of both her parents when the news comes out about her (though she prays that moment won't come for a very long time).

When her mother plays baffled about why the dress doesn't fit, Quinn feeds her the completely obvious lie she prepared. "Really big tacos, in the cafeteria today." This is an obvious lie for many reasons. One, she never ate cafeteria food. Two, what public school cafeteria served really big anything? With their budgets, none. Three, her parents weren't fans of letting them eat what they referred to as "ethnic" food. It was a really long and nonsensical reasoning, but as far as they knew, she never, ever ate anything like that. So, there it is, a huge and very apparent lie.

Her mother returns with a lie just as thin to explain her weight gain and that's the moment Quinn knows. Her mother knows the truth. She knows she's pregnant. (_Please let it just be her third scotch of the night talking,_ she prays.) And she's surprised that she can play along with her father in their typically fake banter because all she really feels like doing is crying. Her mother knows she's pregnant, and she'd rather keep up their messed up tradition of not confronting things than be there for her.

(Quinn cries herself to sleep again that night as she has so many nights in the last several weeks. Tonight though, she cries because it seems more certain than ever that she's not going to be a part of her own family much longer. And maybe they'd never really loved her in the way the she needed them to, but they're her family and she loves them and she doesn't want to lose them.)

-o-o-o-

The day after Quinn realizes her mother knows she's pregnant, she finds out Finn's mother knows as well. Only Finn's mom knows because he decided to be an idiot and tell her. Seriously, how hard was it to keep a secret? And she'd been really clear about exactly how horribly her parents would react to the news and how if anyone else found out, they'd be more likely to find out. So what was Finn thinking actually telling his mother the truth?

She knows that one of the things she initially liked about Finn was that he was from a family that was actually loving instead of one that pretended to be. So she could sympathize that it must have been difficult to keep something this big from his mother, but couldn't he understand how she'd lose the one thing she has left if her parents found out the truth?

These same worried thoughts over Finn's level of comprehension over her situation stay on her mind all day. She knows she had been harsh on him earlier, calling him an idiot in all, but he's adding so much more stress to her life and she can't handle more.

She's pulled from her thoughts by a timid, "Quinn?"

She looks around her in the hallway and finds Artie has rolled up beside her. She tries to smile as she says, "Artie, sorry for not seeing you there I-"

"Have a lot on your mind?" he guesses. He smiles, shrugs, and says, "Understandable. Besides, most people don't look down this far when the walk- it wouldn't really be very smart of them to."

"Right," she agrees, grateful that he was being nice even though he didn't have a reason to be to her. It's not like she'd be mean to him, but she'd never been particularly kind either.

"So we're paired up for the ballads," Artie begins, "was there a time you're free to get together and work on it?"

"I'm free pretty much always since news of my pregnancy got out," she returns.

"Well I'm always free too so that should make getting together easy. High five for not having a social life making things easy," he prompts good-naturedly.

She gives him the high five with a smile, relieved that this, interacting with someone new, talking to someone who could easily judge her for her situation, was actually easy thanks to him. "So the choir room, after school?" she inquires. The bell is going to ring soon so as much as this whole interaction has actually been nice, she knows that they better get a move on or they'll both be late.

"Sure," he agrees, "I'll make sure it's available. If not, I'll find a way to let you know."

She glances at the time on her phone and decides that with a minute left until classes start, she has time to give him her number. So she does and they part ways. Once she's in class, she realizes that her many worries hadn't crossed her mind while she talked to Artie. Sure, it was brief, but it was a nice change all the same and she hopes that while completing the glee assignment with him the same will be true.

-o-o-o-

The choir room wasn't available. Tina and Mike had signed up to have it, but given that Artie was paired with Quinn and they'd all been feeling really bad about what her and Finn were going through, Tina and Mike rescheduled so they could have it. (Artie doesn't tell her any of this, instead she finds it out over a week later from Brittany who apparently didn't know that no one would have mentioned this discreet juggling to do some small nice thing for her.)

So, what Quinn knows as the end of the day approaches is that Artie has sent her a text that read, "Choir room. After school. It'll be ballad-riffic."

Initially, other than the earlier conversation with Artie being a nice distraction and looking forward to another distraction, Quinn is also glad for the practice with Artie because it gives her an excuse not to talk to or see Finn after school. First, she doesn't really want to see him because she's definitely not thrilled with him at the moment. Second, she knows that all of this with him is entirely her fault because she's the one who involved him in her situation in the first place. So if she sees him and she's acts as mad as she feels (as she's been doing with him all the time lately), she knows she'd regret it as she has every other time. He doesn't deserve her wrath. Granted, he's been a complete idiot lately. But he's not the father so he doesn't deserve anything she's done to him.

Quinn arrives in the choir room to find Artie already there, guitar in hand and talking with someone she recognizes from the jazz band.

When they see her enter, the other person tells Artie that they'll see him around and he's off out the door. Artie wheels around to face Quinn and begins, "So, want to get started?"

"Sure," she agrees easily because they do have to do something. She walks to the chairs, places her bag in one and takes a seat in another. Artie swings around and positions himself in front of her, with some difficulty since he was doing all this with his acoustic guitar still in hand.

Once they're situated silence settles between them. For his part, Artie actually looks like he's trying to think of what to do for the assignment. For her part, Quinn's unfortunately not distracted as she had hoped because she's wondering how she's possibly going to get through the dinner her father wanted to have with Finn this weekend without him spilling her secret to her parents.

"Can I be honest?" Artie asks, interrupting her thoughts. She nods and he continues, "I kind of really don't want to do this assignment. Normally a ballad expressing how I'm feeling would be fine, but at the moment, I don't know what I'm feeling. I looked for a ballad like that, but there weren't any that covered confusion." He looks regretful as he concludes, "So, I'm completely unprepared to work on a ballad."

"Me too," she agrees. Her worries are still heavily weighing on her mind and she had been hoping this assignment, working with Artie, may give her at least a small break from them. In an attempt to still get that out of this experience she asks, "Well, what's confusing you? If you don't mind me asking. Maybe we could find a song that fits it." Considering she doesn't really know Artie and has never talked to him, Quinn would have never typically even considered asking and starting a real conversation- she never usually did anything like that with people. But she could really use the distraction of his problems so she didn't have to think of her own.

"I don't mind," Artie responds, ever in favor of letting people in, though seeming a little surprised that this was the direction all this went. He confesses, "Well, what's been confusing me lately is basically Tina."

Quinn's eyebrows shoot up. She knew she saw them in the halls together sometimes or talking pretty frequently, but maybe just because she's been so absorbed in her own life, but she honestly hadn't considered that there was anything at all romantic going on between them. "Girl trouble, should have guessed," she responds.

"Given my status as a ladies man, yeah, you should have," Artie jokes in return. After Quinn's done laughing at that he continues seriously, "It's just… I guess I don't know how I feel about her anymore." To Quinn's look of complete confusion he explains, "We went out recently and we kind of spent our date at school so it wasn't much of a date exactly- but it was still really great. It was perfect even- until she told me she's been lying to me forever. You promise not to tell anyone anything I tell you, right?" Artie checks because he hasn't talked to Tina so he doesn't know if she's letting her secret out and letting go of the stutter or if she's still hanging on to it.

He's going to trust her with an actual secret? It wasn't that many weeks ago that people feared her finding out their secrets because naturally her position required her to use them against people. She only ever enjoyed that when she really disliked the person or they deserved it though so not having to do it is actually a nice change. And being trusted could be an even better change. Plus, she can certainly keep a secret, she's been keeping a whole lot big of ones lately. "I promise," she responds, honestly intending to be true to her word.

He smiles like he believes her and divulges, "Tina doesn't have a stutter. It was this whole thing she started a long time ago and I understand why she did, her story made sense to me. And I understand that she wasn't just lying to me with doing it for so many years, she was lying to everyone. But still it means she's been lying to me since the moment I met her and about something that kind of made us alike. I just can't seem to let it go even though I want to because I like her and I want to be with her."

Quinn thinks that maybe she shouldn't have asked because she has no idea what to tell him. Love life problems were certainly not an area she was even competent in and her love life over the last six or so months proved that. She offers honestly, "Maybe all you need is a little time. It sounds like you'll still like her for a while, so maybe all you need is time to get over how her actions hurt you." (She doesn't see how this could apply to her as well.)

"Maybe," Artie agrees. He sighs, "But in the mean time she got paired up with Mike- who's popular and cool and a nice guy-"

"If you're the first person she shared her secret with, then I don't think you have anything to worry about. Mike is all of those things, but she was honest with you and that means a lot," Quinn points out. She's learned from experience how much honesty can mean between two people (and all of the bad things that can come from it as well, unfortunately).

"I hope so," he offers. Getting back to the point of them being there, Artie asks, "So any ballads coming to mind that fit my situation?"

She shakes her head, smiles regretfully and answers, "None."

"Maybe we could work on yours then," Artie suggests. Before Quinn can turn down the offer (she really doesn't want to express how she's feeling- it'd be too revealing), Artie continues, "I was kind of thinking it'd be cool and set us apart from everyone else if we played an instrument for at least one of the songs- whatever they end up being. Do you play anything? Like did Finn ever teach you how to play the drums at all?"

"Finn never taught me anything, but I sort of learned how to play the guitar, a little bit," she offers, without thinking it through. In reflection, it probably wasn't a good idea to bring up anything about her time with Puck even if she never mentioned him and Artie wouldn't know he's how she learned.

"Guitar? Awesome," Artie says and rolls over and picks up an acoustic guitar and rolls it back over to her. He offers it and suggests, "Let's hear what you can do."

She takes it because this is a better topic than talking about her choosing a song to express how she's feeling. She warns, "I've only had about two days of lessons though so I'm really not good." She settles the guitar and tries to remember what she learned (it's not hard- despite her best efforts after they fell apart, she hasn't been able to forget anything). She starts to play the song Puck tried to teach her, "Hey There Delilah."

She messes up a few times and stops about half way through because she figures she demonstrated what little ability she had by then.

"That was pretty decent, especially for having only two days of lessons," Artie compliments. He hesitates, brows furrowing a little, chuckles and comments, "It's funny though- the way you play it kind of reminds me of how Puck plays. Some people have a style when they play, yours is like his, weirdly."

She can tell he's not assuming anything, but she has a lot of guilt always just barely beneath the surface. And now it's coming up, coloring her face and making her hang her head in shame.

He's not dense, so she knows that in the prolonged silence in which she didn't verbally respond to his comment, he figured out what everything meant. He is a good guy though and he offers an obviously ridiculous excuse for the similarity, "It must be something in the water of the cool people."

She meets his eyes, smiles gratefully. "Thank you," she offers softly, sincerely.

He nods and lets that be his only acknowledgement that anything just happened here. Sometimes people needed their secrets, he was learning that a lot lately.

Changing the topic he offers, "Well, I guess we're not going to be making any progress today since neither one of have any song ideas. You want to just call it a day, give it some thought, and meet again later this week or the weekend?"

"Sure, that'd probably be best," Quinn agrees. This whole meeting had been a distraction- until it brought her right back to thinking about exactly the things she didn't want to be. Plus, he at least had a really good idea of the giant secrets he was hiding. Out of all the people that she knew that could find out, good-hearted Artie was probably the best. But still, the fact that anyone even had an idea of the truth was yet another big worry to greatly weigh on her mind.

Quinn goes home and tries to concentrate on the things she should be doing- like homework. But after an hour of her worries getting to her she decides to be proactive. Given that her mother seems to know she's pregnant and someone at school seems to have figured out she had "something" with Puck at some point, her biggest secrets don't seem likely to stay secrets for long. She has more faith in Artie keeping quiet than her mother not doing something or her dad simply finding out from one of the many, many people at this point that know she's pregnant. So, to try and prevent her dad from learning the truth and doing something about it she decides to stop her ignoring of Finn and try and prepare him for dinner with her parents (without slipping up about "their" secret). And she decides that while she's doing that, she's also going to help Finn pass his classes because Jesus, he really needs help.

(She has no idea that this preparation is the very thing that stresses him out well past his breaking point and helps convince him to take action to get the truth out.)

-o-o-o-

Puck is having an okay week. Nothing particularly great about it, but it's not _so_ bad either. At least not having glee with everyone means he doesn't have to see Quinn leaning all over Finn during practice, which also means the only way he sees them together is tense and fighting in the halls (which, since he wants her and all, should probably make him feel better than it does, but it kind of just makes him feel like crap and he's not sure why). It also means that he has to practice something with Mercedes. He has no idea if that'll be a good thing or a bad thing, but he plans on semi-blowing off the assignment anyway. No way, no how was he expressing something truly honest so he figured he'd go with something that people expect of him (and that, in his opinion, is pretty true) and sing "I'm Too Sexy" (that's a ballad, right?).

Puck really just wants to get through this whole paired up thing. It's nothing against Mercedes personally (at first), he just wants to prove he's ready to do his song to her so he doesn't have to see her again and he can spend more time trying to figure out how to get more money. The real downer of his week so far (and the weekend) was that he had no ideas of how to get more money for Quinn and his daughter. The last resort option he came up with was to steal more money from his mom's stash, buy more marijuana at a discounted price from Pervy Mr. T, and re-sell it at a much higher price to make a profit. As many times as he's turned to crime before, after Quinn implying that he's better than that, he really doesn't want to. He knows he may need to, to actually support them, but at the same time he really wants to be a better guy (one that feels like he deserves her and their daughter).

Getting home to think of something else to do is why he's in such a hurry on Wednesday when Mercedes is supposed to be meeting with him after school. But it's like ten minutes after she said she'd be there and she's still not freaking even in the choir room _and _her phone is busy. He's never been patient so by the time she strolls in, on the phone, he's ready to snap. Unfortunately for him, that's exactly what he does.

She starts going on about _Finn_ and Quinn and baby-gate (what the hell?) and everyone being worried about their emotions. What about him? He's going through this too and her being late just totally cost him.

Then she mentions everyone cares about Finn-and-Quinn and they're all going to sing them a ballad.

This is where he really begins to lose it. Everyone is going to use their ballads and sing them a song. But Finn's still not even stepping up and really, he shouldn't be, it's not his kid!

And just like that it's slipping out, "Finn gets everything! He gets the sympathy, he gets the _girl_." She didn't even need to ask what his problem was, he's already on his way confessing everything he shouldn't, "Finn's not the father! I am."

He should feel awful about saying that when he knows Quinn doesn't want anyone knowing, not right now at least (though he'd planned on changing that). But instead he feels awful mostly thanks to what Mercedes says to him.

"What? Alright, look, you need to get something through your Mohawk real quick. You're the baby's daddy, it takes a helluva lot more to be a father and that role's already been cast because Quinn chose Finn. And you need to accept that and move on, because you have no business messing up that girl's life any more than you already have. You need to back off. You owe her at least that much."

He really had no opinion of Mercedes before today. She was just some girl who was in glee club. Now, he hates her. Seriously, he could have punched her during her little spiel… if he didn't worry that she could have a point.

He heads home, but unlike he intended he doesn't manage to spend any time trying to think of ways to earn money. Instead, he considers what Mercedes said to him. He started feeling guilty that Quinn was pregnant the second he found out she was. He should have done something, anything to at least try and make sure that didn't happen. But lately he'd been not exactly forgetting about that guilt (it's hard to forget something that makes his stomach clench every time he looks at her or thinks of her), but he hadn't been dwelling on it because he'd been too busy trying to get her to change her mind and let him be a part of everything (to pick him over Finn, to be with him instead). He had messed up her life though. He remembered what she said she wanted to do- get out of Lima, maybe go to a school near a beach- and now, thanks to him, that's probably not going to happen.

As bad as he feels about that, he also thinks: screw Mercedes. That girl doesn't know crap because between him and Finn he has been the one making an effort to be a father (not just "the daddy") and he's not a deadbeat so nothing is going to make him stop making that effort. And yes, maybe Quinn chose Finn, but they were in a really bad place when she found out she's pregnant and they're not there anymore so he's going to make sure she picks him now.

It's late when he finally comes to these conclusions about what Mercedes said to him, but with them he finds new resolve to come through for Quinn, to find a job and get his family some money. He decides that despite the fact that it hasn't been helpful any other day so far, he might as well start where he usually does: the classifieds in the paper looking for any job he may qualify for.

Sitting at the kitchen table scanning through the listings- got to rule out any fast food, his method of departure from Burger King made those impossible for him to get- he's startled by, "Noah?" His mom's looking at him curiously from the edge of the kitchen, eyes squinting in the bright lights (she must have been sleeping), "What are you doing up? It's midnight and you have school tomorrow. And why are you reading the paper?"

He folds it up quickly, hoping she doesn't notice what section he was reading, and mixes it in with the others as he lies, "Just some homework I forgot about- supposed to find an article to bring to class."

She seems doubtful of his reason, but it's late and she just woke up so she lets it go. She walks over to get a glass of water, like she intended. She hadn't seen him alone, without Kelyn around today and she had something she'd been meaning to mention. She sits down at the table next to him and by his fidgeting she figures she's right in assuming he was lying about the assignment (but he was just reading the paper, he can't be lying about anything that bad, right?). "There's some money missing from the hiding place I told you about. Know anything about that?" she questions, trying to sound like she's not accusing even though she knows there's not another logical possibility.

Damn it. He was afraid this would happen. He knew stealing from her stash wasn't smart, but he needed to prove to Quinn that he could get money and he needed money to do it. And he knows he should feel bad for stealing from his mom, but with the way Quinn told him they're having a girl, the way she touched him and said he was special, the way she looks like she actually regrets ever saying Finn was the father lately, he doesn't regret or feel bad about the stealing at all. He does feel bad about having to lie to his mom about it though. He can't even meet her eyes, staring at the table as he says, "Yeah, I borrowed it. I'll pay you back. Soon. I…lost a bet."

"What about your pool cleaning business and that money?" she questions, because she knows he didn't spend all of it even though she wasn't sure how much he did spend.

"It was a big bet," he continues lying.

He won't look at her and she has a feeling something is up here. But she has a stash of money in her room because she wanted to have something else he could access in those times where she fell apart and became incompetent and the fact that she messed up really badly this last time is why he knows about that money in the first place. She feels so guilty over the things she knows she put him through and that she didn't have to, if only she'd been stronger, that she doesn't press this issue. Let him keep his secret, she figures, she put him through enough, she doesn't need to press this (unless it seems to become more serious, but right now it's only once, and he deserves to be a high school boy who doesn't want his mom knowing everything he does).

"Okay," she concedes. "Well, don't stay up too much later," she advises as she gets up and heads back to bed.

Puck is left sitting in the kitchen with his guilt consuming him a little more than it usually does these days.

(It looks like his back up plan is no longer a possibility. If she'll notice if any more money is missing, then he can't do it. He can't steal from her again, knowing he'll have to lie to her again. He just _can't._)

-o-o-o-

Quinn knows dinner is going to go badly. It's like she can feel it and she knows that some big change is up ahead. Which is actually hard to imagine that there'd be any more big changes in her life considering she's sixteen and pregnant and isn't that a big enough change already?

As she gets ready for dinner, picks out a dress that will easily hide the little weight she's gained, and scans her room, the contents of it. Whenever her dad finds out the truth (which she prays desperately won't come for a while longer), she knows that this probably won't be her room any longer. It seems so unlikely that he'd tolerate her being in her condition and still part of their family since he seemed pretty serious about the idea of disowning her if she just dated someone they didn't like. Now, she was pregnant as a teenager with a child who's father was someone they definitely wouldn't like- there was no way he was going to let her be in the family any longer like that. She doesn't know what will happen then, when she loses her family, but thinking about it is one of the things terrifying her every second lately.

Finn shows up- on time, thankfully- and Quinn almost starts to think that her nagging feeling that this was going to go badly must be wrong. Finn is clearly extremely nervous, but her dad seems to like that he makes Finn nervous. Plus, despite his nerves, Finn had been managing to talk to her dad about football for the entire hour he'd been there before dinner.

When her mom informs them that dinner's ready, Quinn hangs back in her dad's study and takes Finn's hand as she leads him to the dinning room. She gives his hand a squeeze and smiles up at him, truly grateful that he's not only putting up with her parents for her, but doing so really well.

Then Finn starts to get even more nervous and uncomfortable during dinner and Quinn thinks that her inkling about tonight being a disaster is right the second Finn interrupts her dad's speech. Something bad is going to happen here, she can feel it. But she doesn't have any idea what it's going to be so she has no idea what to do to try and prevent anything from happening.

Finn returns from the bathroom with her mom's stereo. She tries to beg him not to do whatever he's about to do because she knows, just _knows_ it's going to be life altering, but he doesn't listen. He starts singing, "You're Having My Baby." She smiles nervously, hoping she'll be able to convince her parents that he's just joking. She also wants to hit and kiss Finn. This is possibly the stupidest thing he could have done tonight. But at the same time, the way he seems to earnestly believe that he's doing something good for her here, letting her parents know the truth so they can get involved and help them both out (because he still naively believed that they would and that she was just wrong with her claims otherwise), makes this probably one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for her.

Of course, before Finn even finishes the song, her dad catches on and by the anger scrunching up his face Quinn knows he won't buy that this was a joke. She's never seen her father look so completely livid in her entire life and she's honestly shocked that he doesn't hit Finn right then and there. Instead, Quinn's mom suggests that she and Finn depart for the living room and wait for them there, they just need a minute. (Before she's out the door, she sees her mom head for the gin on the buffet.)

They're alone for less than a minute. Quinn doesn't say anything to Finn as she sits beside him awaiting her parents reaction. He's an idiot and that's why they're in this position right now. But, he loves her, whether in the way they always pretended or not, it is clear that he loves her. Because even though her father looked ready to murder him, he's still sitting here beside her, ready to raise a baby that he believes is his even though they never had sex and just because she claimed it was his, and having (very stupidly) attempted to make her life better, to give her other people to lean on. And not for the first time, Quinn wishes she wasn't doing something so horrible to such a good guy.

Quinn's parents come in and they sit across from them (and separate from each other- as usual). There's a cold harsh silence that rings in the air as her father sits there and stares at her looking disgusted (it makes Quinn feel like crying already, but she refrains for the moment).

"There must be some kind of mistake here. Quinny, we raised you right," her mom starts out, breaking the prolonged silence.

(In reflection, she realizes she should have let out a bitter laugh here. Raised her? They didn't raise her, they just expected things and she just obeyed. And if they taught her anything at all it was how to deny things and how to lie so really they should be proud that she obviously learned so well.

At the moment though, she's too busy being terrified of all to come to respond at all.)

"You did," Finn assures, "We didn't even have…sex."

Quinn cringes internally. Here Finn is defending her and she's praying that her parents don't ask about that comment so Finn won't find out the truth, which essentially means that she's praying that she'll get to continue to screw him over with her situation. She feels awful.

"I'm sorry, can we just stop with the lying please," her mother interjects.

(In reflection, Quinn knows she should have laughed bitterly or retorted here too. At least half of the things her parents ever say are lies.

At the moment though, she's too busy being relieved that no one asked Finn about his comment so he couldn't learn the truth.)

Her dad launches into a reflective story. It makes her tear up, the way he talks about her when she was a little girl. It's like he actually cared about her and loved her, which is something that she wasn't ever certain of. She always feared any of his affections were only just an act.

She notices her mom tearing up too and she hopes that means that her mom cares enough that she'll finally… do something, anything to prevent this from ending as badly as she fears.

In an attempt to fight against the bad ending, Quinn says sincerely, "Daddy I'm so sorry." And she is. It's been a long time since she actually liked her parents or actually wanted to be around them, but she really was sorry to be in this situation and sorry to put them through it as well. No matter what they did to her here, she knows that finding out your youngest daughter, your sixteen-year-old daughter, is pregnant, can't be easy.

(She's noticed lately, when she talks to her father she always calls him "Daddy." After this is over, it sounds so wrong that she ever did. It sounds too affectionate for the non-relationship they had. But, she realizes, that's exactly why she calls him "Daddy." Majority of the times she spoke to him at all were when she was a child and even in the relative silence of recent years the solitary term still stuck with her.)

The ending starts approaching sooner than she thought as her father follows her apology by him pointing at Finn and saying, "You need to leave."

Quinn's done wrong by Finn (from the very start and especially lately) and it doesn't surprise her how she springs to his defense when she's given this opportunity. "Wait," she says, pulling him back from leaving the couch beside her, "Please daddy, can we talk about this? Finn is a good guy. He loves me."

Her father doesn't look at her as he says it, but he adds, "You too."

(Her heart breaks here.)

(In reflection, she'll remember that her mother seemed shocked here. But, after everything, that doesn't really matter and it's not as comforting as it should be.)

"Get out of my house," he orders coldly, jaw set tight.

"You can't do that. She didn't do anything wrong," Finn stumbles in your defense, "Please, Mrs. Fabray, do something."

It's over. Quinn's family- they don't want her. She figures she has nothing left to lose, she may as well put everything out there. Everything she feels, everything she's thought (well, in summation- if it was truly everything they'd be here forever, she had a lot of baggage when it came to her family). "Don't bother Finn," she tells him, "If she wanted to do something she would have when she found out I was pregnant."

"You knew?" her father demands of her mother.

"I- no," she stumbles, seeming shocked she's been ousted, "She didn't tell me anything."

"But you knew," Quinn insists confidently, tears streaming a bit more steadily, sniffles a little more harsh. She reveals, her voice wavering with vulnerability, "And I _needed _you. I needed my mom." She gasps a little through the tears as she continues knowingly, "And you were so scared of what he would do if he found out that you just pushed it aside like we do every bad feeling in this house. If you don't talk about it, it doesn't exist."

"Do not turn this on us!" her father bellows, startling them all. He continues yelling angrily, "You are the disappointment here!"

(In reflection, even when she tries to forget everything about her parents and especially this whole ugly scene, she'll still hear his words screaming in her head. And the worst part is, sometimes, she agrees with them.)

At the moment though, she fights back (because she's got nothing left to lose). "Why?" she questions, barely getting the syllable out through the emotion thick in her voice. "Because I'm not a little girl anymore? Because I made a mistake?"

(In reflection, the fact that she used the word "mistake" will haunt her. Sleeping with Puck had felt like a mistake every day since the day after she slept with him- and especially every day she's known she's pregnant. But still, the label nags at her.)

"Who are you?" her father questions, seeming genuinely perplexed by her, "I don't recognize you at all."

"I'm your daughter, who loves you. And I know this must be really hard for you, but I just need my daddy to hold me and tell me that it's going to be okay," Quinn responds, putting herself out there again, taking another chance. She used to want to be as far away from her family as possible, but since she's been going through this, she's known that all she really wants is to be able to count on them. She wants them to clean up the mess she's made of her life and to consol her through all the worse parts that seem destined to come.

Her father looks at her, still just as distant as ever, just as cold. He walks towards her and she pleas desperately, voice barely above a squeak though all the tears, "Daddy, please."

Her father continues to walk out of the room and she cries harder.

"Judy," her father calls harshly from another room and her mother promptly goes.

Quinn just stands there and cries. She doesn't know what else to do and she's not sure she could manage anything else besides. She's sixteen, pregnant, and her family just abandoned her. (And ironically at the same time, both of her parents had just barely expressed that the do actually care about her.) In the last three months, she got her heart broken by Puck, and then by her own choices, and now by her parents. She starts to jiggle her right leg as she cries, trying not to be overcome by it all. But it's been such a hard few months and everything just keeps getting worse- seems destined to continue to be so.

Her father comes back in just long enough to tell her she has thirty minutes to pack and get out of the house- he's setting a timer, on the microwave, she should be out by the time it goes off.

That announcement makes her feel like crying more. But she doesn't want to be around people who don't want her, who would do this to her, she's not sure she even could be for more than the thirty minutes. More than anything in this moment, she just wants to get out of here, move on, and pretend this never happened (as much as she possibly can). This desire motivates her into racing up stairs and packing as quickly as possible. Finn follows her and she puts him to work as fast as she can think of things.

She's sure she won't be able to leave here with her car, it actually being purchased by her parents in all. But she's definitely getting out of here with as much as she possibly can because this might be the very last time she sees this room or her things (and if worst comes to worst, she may need to sell belongings to get money so the more stuff she has, the better).

Luckily packing is made easy by the fact that she already separated her closet into things that would fit despite her growing stomach and things that definitely wouldn't. She makes sure she grabs things like coats and boots and sweaters for the upcoming winter months. Thankfully her parents had bought her an expensive luggage set to tote to cheer camp each year so she has plenty of space to shove all the clothes into.

She finds a box and makes sure she gets everything she'll need for school- all of her books and school supplies. She packs her laptop because it was a gift after all so should technically be hers (as was the car, but she knows the title isn't in her name and her parents could probably report it as stolen if she takes it). She directs Finn to pack some of her books too. Not only does she figure she'll probably have plenty of time to read now that she doesn't have a social life, but if she ever really needs money, she could sell them to a used bookstore for a very small profit.

Knowing that they don't have much time left and that it will take more than one trip to get all of her things in his car, Quinn asks Finn to take a load of stuff down. He's hesitant, understandably not wanting to come into contact with her parents, but he doesn't object, just does as she asks as he has been through this whole hasty packing.

She continues packing while he's gone, going through her dresser carefully for things that could be valuable or necessary for her to take. She doesn't have much jewelry, her mother insisting that it wasn't proper for a young girl, who should try to appear prim to wear a lot of jewelry. That had always been fine with her- the only piece of jewelry she ever really liked was her cross anyway. Now though, she wishes she had more because if she did she could sell it. Unfortunately, as it is she only has about a dozen pairs of earrings (not all of them very nice), two bracelets, and one ring. She wasn't going to get much for any of it.

She hurriedly goes through her dresser drawers- trying to get all of her undergarments packed while Finn was out of her room. She gets them shoved into a suitcase and moves on to her desk. It's in the first drawer of her desk that she finds something that finally gives her pause in her frantic packing. It's an asthma inhaler. Kelyn's asthma inhaler. She had kept it after the last time she watched the girl because first, Puck had said he had plenty so it wasn't like he needed it back. But also, she kept it just in case. Just in case she found herself babysitting Kelyn again. Just in case she and Puck ever became something more than four days of sneaking around. And she was right to keep it because they did become something more than that. Then, of course, everything got messed up. But still, she was right to keep it the first time. Here, now, she considers the reasons she kept it before, the state she's in now, the state they're in now, the future, and decides. She shoves the inhaler in the case with her delicates, figuring it will go safely unfound in there, and figuring that she should probably keep it still, just in case.

Time is running out. Finn comes back in and he checked the timer on his way up. They only have a few minutes. She scans the room again. Putting random things in her bags in a panic. Then, she stops. She needs to walk away from this. This isn't her home and she doesn't want to stay here when it feels this _torturous _to be here anyway. "I'm done," she tells Finn decisively. She picks up one of her bags, Finn taking on the other three, takes one last look around as she tries not to cry, and walks out.

She doesn't see her parents as she leaves the house. They must be hiding out somewhere. She decides it's cowardly of them- to kick their daughter out of their house and not even be able to watch her go. (But really, she wishes that she could have seen them one last time as she left. Maybe if they saw her leaving, they'd change their mind.)

It isn't until she's in Finn's car and he's driving them down her street, away from her house, that she realizes she doesn't know where to go. Her sister is eight hours away and not aware of anything going on. As far as friends, she doesn't have any real ones. She suggests, unable to think of anything else, "I guess you could drive me to Brittany's. Sometimes she forgets she's not supposed to be nice so she'd probably let me stay for the night at least."

"Oh," Finn responds slowly, "I was just going to take you to my house." He looks like he feels stupid for having made that assumption and rambles on to explain why he did, "I'll take you wherever you want, but I'm sure it'd be cool with my mom. And we have a spare bedroom…sort of. Technically it's kind of small and it has my drums and all my mom's sewing stuff in there. But it has a bed and my grandma manages to fit in there when she visits. You kind of have a lot more stuff than she ever brings with her though, but I'm sure we could find space for everything." He pulls up to a red light, sighs, turns to her and says guiltily, "It's my fault you got kicked out. I'm so sorry I told them. And I know I can't make up for it, but I'd like to try and make it better by making my home your new home, if you want."

By the time the light turns green and Finn's done making his suggestion, Quinn's tearing up again. Here Finn is apologizing to her for something that was admittedly very stupid of him, but everything's that happened has been entirely her fault and she knows it. She can't think of all of her guilt over what she's doing to him at the moment though. At the moment, she's far too hurt and desperate to turn down such a kind offer (even if she knows that the fact that she's lying to him means it will only be a matter of time before she loses another home).

When they get to Finn's house, his mother (who she's only met a half a dozen times) tells her that she can stay as long as she wants. She sets her up in the very crowded and small spare bedroom, promising they can clean it up and make space in there for her and her things tomorrow. Carol hugs her before she leaves her in the new room, promises everything will be okay, and it makes her feel like crying again (knowing she doesn't deserve any of the kindness she's gotten from any Hudson family member).

Quinn doesn't sleep much that night, being in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. (Plus, every time she closes her eyes she sees her dad kicking her out all over again. At least when she's awake she can make the effort not to think about it.)

-o-o-o-

On Saturday Puck had gotten a text (from Brittany- someone must have talked her into being the one to tell him) that the glee-clubbers decided they'd sing Quinn and Finn "Lean On Me" Monday after school. It said he should come prepared to practice before school Monday morning. Going to school early wasn't something he did, ever, but he decided he'd do this despite his earlier protests about it.

Puck didn't care what Mercedes said to him or what she thought, but he did know that her keeping her mouth shut about everything was necessary. He couldn't slip up again and he couldn't give Mercedes a reason to yell at him again (and therefore risk someone else overhearing and another person knowing something that was supposed to be a secret). So he figured he'd just go along acting like he had been before he slipped up because_ the_ secret still needed to be a secret-until he convinced Quinn that she should forget Finn and at the very least let him be their baby's father.

Puck actually listens to "Lean On Me" on Sunday. It's not like he's preparing to sing the song like the glee-clubbers would want him to, he's just trying to prepare for what it's going to be like to sing the song to _Finn _and Quinn. He doesn't have any problem with the Quinn part- he's sung for her before (which reminds him, he should probably make sure she knows that was for her). But he's going to sing for Finn now? He knows he shouldn't be angry at his best friend because he's the one really getting screwed in all this, but the guy is getting everything he wants and he doesn't even want it himself.

Thinking about how much he hates the way things are and how the real assignment for the week was to pick a ballad that expressed themselves, Puck starts to wonder what he would pick if he was to do the assignment for real (not that he ever would even if they weren't doing this little song dedication thing). He looks through his music, but he only owns real manly music (fo' sure), so he's got nothing that fits this heavily angsty, pretty angry (and sort of girl-like) mood he's in. This leads him to quite a lengthy internet search. He finally settles on something though and plays it just for the hell of it he tells himself. (Really, he hopes it will be cathartic because he wants to stop hating his best friend and stop hating the situation he's in and just feel like a better guy than he's certain he is).

He intends only to play the song, not to sing it, but Ray LaMontagne's "Burn" isn't much of a song without the lyrics. He finds himself singing along after just a line. It doesn't fit his situation exactly, but it's pretty damn close. He realized as he was searching for songs and even more now that he's softly singing one, just above a hum so it doesn't travel through the walls, that Finn and himself aren't the only people he's mad at. Lately, he's been spending so much time wanting Quinn that he's forgotten that she's responsible for the way things are between them too. And part of all the anger he's got pent up inside of him is for her too.

_To see you now with him  
is just making me mad  
Oh so kiss him again  
just to prove to me that you can  
an I will stand here  
and burn in my skin  
Yes I will stand here  
and burn in my skin_

As soon as he finishes the song, Puck's startled by a voice behind him from the direction of his door, asking, "Are you emo now?"

He snaps around in his chair and finds his sister in his doorway. "What?" he questions in return, confused.

"That song was all sad and depressing- kind of like you've been lately. You keep zoning out, all serious like, sucking the fun out of everything," Kelyn explains authoritatively. She asks again, "So does that mean you've become one of those emo kids?"

"No," Puck responds simply answering her question. Rather than commenting on the things she's noticed (because he knows he's been different lately, since his life got a whole lot more complicated), Puck questions, "Do you even know what emo means?"

She shrugs her shoulders and offers, "I don't know, but when people act all serious and different and sad like you other people usually call them emo."

"That's because people are stupid," Puck explained succinctly. Sure he'd called people emo as an insult, but at least he knew the true definition and didn't just apply it to anyone he thought was a loser ("loser" was a plenty good enough name for most people). There was no point in explaining it to Kelyn though, he's pretty sure she'd stop listening by the time he got an eighth of the way through explaining the history of the term.

"So what are you then? Why have you been different lately?" Kelyn's quick to question, concerned about why one of the steady things in her life changed.

Rather than denying that he was different (Kelyn would just give him those imploring eyes and he'd end up caving anyway), Puck tries to brush it off. He shrugs casually and offers, "Just stuff going on. Nothing to worry about; things will be better soon."

"Or maybe things could be better now. At least, I know something that would be awesome if it happened," Kelyn suggests.

"What?" Puck returns, falling into her trap easily.

Kelyn proposes excitedly, "We could see Quinn. You could call her and I could hang out with her and-"

"No," Puck cuts her off, "What did I tell you about that?"

Kelyn partially rolls her eyes as she recites dully, "You said that Quinn's busy with school and cheer and that weird glee thing you're doing too and that she was busy in the summer with cheer camp so we can't _ever_ seem to call her."

"Exactly. So stop asking like every week," Puck nearly pleas. He hates lying to his sister and hates not giving her what she wants when it'd be so easy to do. But he can't give her Quinn, he just _can't_- especially when she's still not his to give.

"Well maybe if your _excuses _weren't so _lame_ I would stop asking," Kelyn responds angrily. She threatens, "You know maybe one of these days I'll just steal your phone and call her myself."

"No. Kel, promise me you won't," Puck attempts, but he's met with silence. He gets why she's mad. He brought a new person into her life who she got attached to, and then she disappeared- kind of like she knows, but thankfully doesn't remember, their dad did. Lying hasn't been getting him anywhere with her lately and he knows that the truth will probably be coming out at some point anyway so he might as well try a bit of honesty for a change. "Kel," he tries again, "it probably won't be too much longer before you understand everything going on here and I'm sorry for everything you'll learn and the way things are now, because it's all my fault. I've messed up, a lot."

"So fix it," Kelyn tells him earnestly, believing that that was a real solution because she's ten and to her things really were that simple.

"I'm tryin'," he promises, head hung slightly and his eyes avoiding hers because it feels a little bit like another lie. He has been trying, but he feels like he's still been screwing it all up too.

He hears her respond softly after a few beats of silence, "I won't steal your phone." When he looks up, Kel's left his doorway. (When she looks at him from now on, there's this look on her face, like she gets it, gets something that someone who just turned ten probably shouldn't have the life experience to understand. But their lives have been kind of messed up, so the understanding, doesn't really surprise him.)

He spends the rest of Sunday thinking of what "trying" could mean on Monday. If he wasn't lying to his sister, then he should be doing something to try every day and on Monday they'd be singing so it seemed like there was an obvious opportunity there. Unfortunately what to do with that opportunity was completely lost on him. Everything feels too obvious, too risky, and he knows Quinn wouldn't like that.

He gets to school early on Monday, runs through the first practice with the glee kids, and still has no idea what he's going to do today to try for Quinn. By the practice during lunch, he's thrown from concentrating on thinking of an idea because it somehow got around in glee club that Quinn was kicked out of her house by her parents the previous night, for good, and that she was now living with Finn. When he hears, he's not even jealous that it's Finn she was with for this too (well, okay, maybe a bit), he just feels awful. He feels awful about the direction her life is taking because of something he pretty heavily contributed to. He remembers that day in his bedroom and fighting with her, and he feels awful that he managed to make one of her fears come true in her losing her family even though they've never really been together.

Puck kind of phones in practice, but then again so do half of them for, he suspects, various reasons so his lack of participation goes unnoticed. Thinking of something to do gets harder with the new knowledge, but he knows that now more than ever he needs her to know that he wants her, he wants to make things better, make them right.

Finally, when he's in front of her that afternoon and listening to Artie sing as he waits for the appropriate time to join in, inspiration finally strikes. It's small, sure, but at least it fits. And maybe there's a really good chance that he'd get caught considering Finn will be right there to see, but he's used to doing stupid things- at least this time he has a really good reason.

So he directs a secret little "call me" and a soft smile just to her while he sings, and he hopes that she takes him up on it.

-o-o-o-

This morning, Quinn got ready for school in a bedroom that wasn't hers, in a house that wasn't hers. As she brushes her hair, brushes her teeth, raids her bags for an outfit, she realizes that she's never going to get ready for school again in her own bedroom, in her own house. She's not going to wake up in a place that feels like home, possibly, ever again. That's enough to make her want to cry, but she has to get to go to school. She knows school is one of the few things she has left. Even if she feels fairly miserable every minute she's there (and every minute she's not- everything generally pretty much sucks given everything she's lost and everything she knows she will lose), at least thanks to still having impeccable grades she still has a shot at going to college eventually.

Carol made breakfast for all of them and Quinn can tell by the delight and surprise on Finn's face that this isn't a typical part of their morning routine. She tries to smile a lot (fails at it a lot) and she says thank you so many times it's probably starting to sound like she doesn't know any other words. But Quinn feels so guilty for lying to the nice people that took her in and are trying to treat her like family, that all she can manage are attempted smiles and grateful thank you's.

When she gets to school, riding there with Finn, which kind of signals to people that something is different now, she doesn't bother telling anyone about what happened. She doesn't really have anyone to tell anyway, but more than that she'd rather let school distract her for the day and let Finn tell whoever, she just doesn't want to care about it anymore.

By lunch Quinn can tell that Finn has told people. She's grateful that just some people from glee seem to know. They're the people she's come to like best at this school so it seems appropriate that they know. None of the few she sees- Matt, Tina, Artie, and Mercedes- say anything to her, but she can tell by the way they look at her, as if they feel even more sorry for her than they did before, that they know.

At the end of the day Brittany and Santana find her and tell her that they all have to head to the choir room- some glee thing. Honestly, she's glad for whatever it is. She's hoping that Rachel couldn't wait to sing her ballad to Mr. Schue and is going to serenade him. Rachel and her sudden and extremely obvious crush on Mr. Schue had been one of the few things to completely take her mind off of her troubles for a even a few minutes lately- thanks entirely to how hilarious it was.

But then she's asked to sit in a particular seat and Finn's being led in and made to sit next to her and she honestly doesn't at all put together what could be happening. People had never done something so nice for her and the idea that they would didn't occur to her. As it all begins and she realizes what the kids from glee club are doing, the tears start forming in her eyes. She grabs Finn's hand and hangs on to it in an effort to keep the tears from spilling over, but it's only a few seconds before the first ones do and she's clutching Finn's hand harder so she doesn't completely fall to pieces.

She's smiling the whole time though. She's lost so much lately. She's lost her family, but these people that she's never even been that nice to are here and showing her that they care and that means so much to her. She vows to herself then and there that she will be as good to these people as they have been to her.

Then Puck catches her eye and, head tilted and eyes soft, he tells her, "Call me," fitting in with the song. She bites her lip (as her heart feels that familiar flutter), feels another tear roll down her face, and shakes her head a little. She tries to get lost in the song and the act of the glee club, instead of letting Puck's action remind her about how complicated everything really is. She's successful at forgetting for the rest of the song and for the rest of her time with the glee club- there wasn't cake after like Finn had hoped, but there was Mr. Schue re-performing his ballad mash-up that he did for Rachel (at her insistence).

Later, after a relatively silent dinner with Finn's mom and then shutting herself in the guest room to supposedly do homework (but it just felt awkward to be anywhere else) and after Carol knocked on her door to let her know that she understands if she's not up to it yet, but she'd like to talk about _everything_ sometime, Quinn's mind finally finds its way back to the song and the small message from Puck. All the lights are out in the house, Finn had already said goodnight and presumably had gone to sleep as had his mother. Somehow that makes her feel both safe and nervous. And the safe part lead her to typing the text she's typing now and the nervous part came from who she was sending it to (and the idea of where she was and who she was now going to communicate with).

She texts Puck a bunch of things, deleting them all before she settles on a simple, "Hi."

It's nearly midnight so she figures she may not get a response, but she stares at her phone in the darkness and waits for it to light up with a new text anyway. (She's honestly surprised it's still working at all. She thought her parents would have had her service canceled by now.)

When his phone went off so late at night, Puck figured it was probably Santana (the girl had a habit of thinking they were together for random moments of time at her convenience and he never used to have a reason not to go along with it). He's surprised when he realizes that the short text is from Quinn. There's a lot he wants to say to her, but a text message doesn't seem like the best method to have a serious conversation through like they really need to. Maybe that's why she chose it, he thinks. He doesn't want to turn things serious but he does want to know why she's texting (not calling) so he tries to quip: _I thought I told you to call me. You miss the lyrics?_

Quinn's hand darts out for her phone so hastily when she sees it go off that she nearly knocks it off the nightstand and sends it flying across the room. She figured that this would be a topic and since she wanted to call, she has no problem telling him the truth: _It's only my second night here- don't know how thin the walls are._ She knows she's going to lose what she has here, but she's not going to bring that on any sooner than necessary by doing something risky and talking to Puck late at night- possibly about their baby or about their history- when she could possibly be easily overheard.

The fact that her response insinuated that she was in a separate room from Finn (he assumes the guest/storage room he knows Finn's house has) is a relief to Puck. He has a hard enough time with the fact that Finn's still her boyfriend and Finn thinks he's the father of his kid and Finn being the one to take her in that he's pretty sure that if he found out she was sharing a room (or possibly a bed) with him, he'd go over there without hesitation and let the whole truth come out as he drags her away from Finn. As much as he always feels like doing just that, telling everyone the truth so she doesn't have the option of being with someone else, he knows it would hurt her and he'd probably lose her more than he already has. So he responds the way he knows he should instead of the way he wants to: _How are you? You okay at the Hudson's?_

_I'm fine_, she texts back. She's not fine. She hasn't been fine since she found out she's pregnant. (She hasn't been fine since the day everything between them fell apart.) But she's as okay as she ever is these days. The Hudson house may not feel like home, but it does feel warm and safe- which is better than she feels like she deserves given the situation.

Puck takes the short answer as a sign to drop that topic. So he goes for the other topic he'd really like to start talking to her about a lot more. He asks: _How's our girl?_

After how much everything he said to her that day they ended broke her, it shouldn't make her heart flip to see him refer to the baby she's pregnant with way too young as "our girl." But it does. Despite everything the fact that this baby is his, this baby is _theirs_, changes everything. Right now, she doesn't think of how complicated everything is, she just answers him honestly: _She's good. I think she may have moved today. Can't be sure. I only know it's supposed to feel like bubbles and there was something like that earlier but it was over quick. _

As soon as she hits send on the last part of her message (having split it up), Quinn starts to panic. She's not sure she's ready to talk about everything with him. She hasn't told him about the deal she made with Terri Schuestuer and she's not sure she wants to. She's not sure of what she wants at all and she doesn't want to reject him or give him hope when she doesn't know what she wants. So she quickly adds on to the text: _I need to get some sleep. It's been an exhausting few days. See you tomorrow. _

That's discouraging. And here he'd been in the middle of typing a text in response to her saying: _Wish I could be around you more._ Or at least that was one he was considering but he honestly didn't really know what to say, especially in text message. He hopes that feeling the same is the only reason she ended it. (He hopes that she didn't stop because it was him she was talking to.)

Quinn's text wasn't entirely a lie. It was after midnight and it would only be about a handful of hours before she needed to get up from school. Besides the pregnancy making her more tired than usual, it had indeed been an exhausting and emotionally draining couple of days. So she was being honest when she said she needs to get some sleep. Unfortunately, her mind isn't letting her rest.

She prays for clarity, for probably the thousandth time. Things would be so much less complicated if this wasn't Puck's baby. If she had slept with some random guy or even Finn this would all be easier. It'd be easier to separate herself from the baby, it'd be easier to let it go like she knows she probably should. Because if the baby wasn't someone's who not too long ago she thought she might… well, it would just be easier if it wasn't his. But the baby was Puck's, _hers and Puck's_, and she wasn't sure what to do with that. Should she finally tell him how she's giving the baby up or should she trust that he said he wants them and forget about the idea of giving away _their _baby?

Quinn doesn't get much sleep again that night, this time thinking of everything she's still so uncertain of.

-o-o-o-

By the next day Puck has made a decision. He figures that maybe their conversations have been so short lately (not to mention few and far between) because she's afraid, or something, to tell him about the decision he knows she made. Given that Finn told Mr. Schue and Finn fought with her about it in the halls a couple of weeks ago, the fact that she planned on giving the baby up had made its way around glee club.

He doesn't want her to give the baby away. He wants Quinn and how could anything between them survive her giving away their baby? So she needs to keep the baby and they'll just raise it and be a family. As far as he's concerned, that idea sounds really good.

He's pretty sure that he doesn't have her convinced of the same future plan yet though. He'd rather just keep working towards winning her over and have the first time she really talks about their future be when she tells him that she'll be his and she wants a family with him. It takes him until the text conversation the previous night and fear setting in a couple of hours later, but he realizes that she could be arranging something legally binding right now or could have already done it and he really doesn't want her to get that far with this whole giving the baby up thing because he has no idea if she'd be able to get out of something like that and then she'd never really be able to pick him. So, he's going to have to bring all this up with her. Only, he doesn't want to actually talk to her about it (afraid she'd make good points, smarter ones than he could think of, for why she's made the decision she has).

So he catches up with her as she's walking to her fourth class of the day down a crowded hallway by herself. He leans over and says in a hushed tone so he's not overheard as he matches her stride, "I just wanted to let you know that I know what you're planning on doing with her. And I get it, but to give you a heads up, since I wish you would change your mind, I'm going to keep working to try and get you to." They're still surrounded by people and he can tell that she's trying to think of something that she can say in front of all these people that wouldn't be telling. He wanted to keep this short though so he continues quickly, "You could've told me though. I told you I'd be here for you and even if I want things to be different, I still mean that." He detours to the nearest hall and doesn't look back. He said what he needed to say and maybe tomorrow he'd say a little more because he's fighting for this until he gets what he wants.

Later that day, after school, he gets a sign that he should definitely talk to Quinn about the baby again the next day when Kelyn forces him into taking her to the bookstore. She needed something for school…or maybe it was recreational, he wasn't quite sure as he kind of tried to tune her out when she started whining and pleading with him to drive her. Anyway, while he's there waiting for his little sister to get whatever, he stumbles around the bargain section and _How to Raise a Baby on Five Dollars a Day _catches his eye. Well, money would definitely be one of the things Quinn is probably concerned about given everything (it's one of the things he's concerned about too) so he buys two copies and decides he's definitely going to be talking to her about the baby tomorrow (though, with two days in a row he should probably put some kind of disclaimer in there to take the pressure off of her- he doesn't want to make her feel like he's forcing her into finally picking him).

-o-o-o-

What Puck had said to her had been hanging with Quinn for the slightly-over-a-day since he said it. She didn't know that he'd known about her decision, but she knew all the rest. She knew it wasn't the decision he wanted her to make and that he'd been working to trying to get her to change her mind and that he wasn't giving up on that. Since he said all that though, she realized that she didn't think she wanted him to give up and she did want him to get her to change her mind.

But even though she had that moment where she realized that she thinks she feels that way about her situation, a hundred other things tell her that that's not right (that none of this is right) and she's left just as confused as ever about everything. Just as she's settled uncomfortably back in confusion, Quinn gets another surprise from Puck.

He catches up with her on her way to glee club after school Tuesday and hands her a book. As she reads the cover and glances at the description on the back, too stunned for the words she's skimming to stick with her, he tells her how he saw it and thought he'd steal it for her just in case she decided to keep the baby.

"That is so sweet," slips out before she can stop herself as well as telling him that she's so confused lately she doesn't know what she's going to do. He tells her that there's no pressure, which makes her smile bigger, and then they're left waiting for glee practice and she's left to think about everything that just happened.

She knew she's been horribly confused and that she's been thinking about her decision for the baby a lot lately (since she made it really), but she hadn't yet come right out and said or even thought that she's considering changing her mind about what she's going to do with the baby. She'd been hesitating to even committing to thinking that even once, but then Puck went and did something that again demonstrated how much he cared and she was saying it before she could think. Despite all of her confusion, she knows that means something.

If she stays with Finn and no one finds out the truth, then she has to give the baby away because she can't let it ruin Finn's life when it's not his kid to be responsible for. Plus, she really doesn't want to raise a baby with Finn. He's been the best friend she's ever had and he's a great guy, but he's not right for her and she's known that all along (only, it's more important now).

If she were to tell the truth and pick Puck though, then she doesn't have to give the baby away. This leaves her with two hard questions though: Does she really want to take another chance on Puck? And, does she really want to be a family with him by keeping the baby? (Because she knows that she can't pick Puck and not keep their baby. Maybe, while together, they'd come to the decision that they simply couldn't keep her, which would probably end them, but she'd have to be ready to keep their child if she was going to be with him too because she knows the situation would set her up to.)

The first question is easier to answer. As she sits in a chair and watches him interact with the glee kids, all having fun as he randomly plays the piano a bit (a skill she didn't know he had and that she'll have to talk to him about), and he smiles at her, she realizes that she does want to take another chance on Puck. Everything fell apart last time and it still hurts to even think about that day and the things that were said, but she also remembers what happened that day. That day, she chose her parents over Puck. She was afraid to tell them that she was with him because she thought they'd abandon her, but they abandoned her anyway and even though her and Puck shattered in that moment where her fear about them won, he's stuck by her side through it all and he's still trying to show her he's the good guy she thought he was. She should have picked Puck back then, she realizes. In hindsight, he was clearly the one who cares for her more. She's not going to make the same mistake twice, she won't rule him out as a serious possibility just because she's scared, but she also won't dive right in trusting him either (too much has happened and the situation is too important).

The second question is harder to answer. She spends all her time actively telling herself to be conscious of the fact that she's pregnant (and therefore take care of the baby), but to try not to think about the fact that there's a baby growing inside her, her baby, her little girl. She tries not to think of the baby as hers because she's known all along that she doesn't have just about anything that she'd need to keep her (she has even less now). But maybe they could figure something out. If they could, would she want to keep the baby? Well, considering how crazy Terri and her idiot sister have been lately when they badger her with stuff randomly, that's not looking like the best environment for it anymore. (She doesn't want to commit to the words just yet, doesn't want to get her hopes up, but of course she'd keep this baby, this giant piece of her that's been with her through every horrible thing lately. And the real reason she has to actively try and not think about the baby is because she fell in love with her at some point while her life was falling apart and she's just trying not to fall even more and make everything harder.) She doesn't feel certain of what she wants, but she starts putting a plan in motion anyway.

After practice, Quinn talks to Kurt and gets her plan started. Kurt's crush on Finn isn't quite as obvious as Rachel's, but a little time spent together should get them on the mutual mission of breaking her and Finn up and thus one or both of them should keep Finn busy trying to distract him from her-freeing her up to find some way to spend time with Puck.

As of that evening, talking to Kurt and setting that part of the plan in motion is as far as she's gotten on planning what she's going to do. What is she supposed to do? Just invite Puck over to talk… at Finn's house? She can't go to his house, she's showing a bit now. They can't exactly go out in public together either- what would people think? Thinking of being away from prying eyes, she thinks of Fosters, but she doesn't have a way of going out and checking if anyone's there. Even if Addie's back, she doesn't think that it'd be re-opened for business yet (or ever) anyway. Which leaves her with nothing for the rest of her plan.

Later that night, when Finn is playing video games in his room and Carole's watching Lifetime, Quinn holds up in "her" room attempting to work ahead (homework's been done for hours) and runs a hand over her stomach as it seems like its bigger than it was when the day started (it's not). She thinks of what happened, or what she thought happened, two nights ago. She remembered reading once that the baby moving would feel like bubbles…or gas, and for a few seconds the other day she had a feeling that _could_ be described like that. It's been over a week since she's read anything about what's going on with her or the baby though so gets her laptop out, signs on to the neighbor's wireless (the Hudson's don't have it), and starts goggling. It's not long before she realizes that whatever she felt, wasn't likely the baby. Since it's her first pregnancy, apparently she's not going to feel movement for another month or two.

When she reads about what it will feel like and when it's likely to happen (the first time is called quickening), all that information comes accompanied by stories written by women about the first time they felt their child/children move. They're all so adoring, and memorable, and special. And they're all from mothers, not women who gave their baby away- that much is obvious by the way they write. But women who are birthmothers (like she could be) have the same stories as these mothers, but they're not writing them on websites. She doesn't have to think about that to understand why. The first time she feels the baby move, for real, she knows it will be another moment she'll try to make herself forget because this won't be her baby. But, it could be…

It's on the desire to be one of these women on one of these websites that looks back on their pregnancy as special and good that she finds herself dialing her cell phone and calling Terri's sister (Terri had told her to never call her while she was at home- as she likely was tonight). She blurts out right after the other woman's slow hello that she changed her mind and she's keeping her baby. (If she hadn't had said it right away, she probably would have re-thought her sudden decision/urge and never said it). Kendra proceeds to yell at her, but the woman's a moron and she doesn't annunciate so Quinn doesn't catch most of it (didn't want to either). Then, after demanding that she stop by Terri's during lunch tomorrow to tell Terri her "decision," Kendra gives her a perfect opportunity and she hangs up smiling.

Quinn's nervous the next day at the end of lunch. She just told Terri that the deal was off (and then left quickly- because lunch is short and Terri's kind of off her rocker) and her plan is well on its way to working- all she has to do is ask Puck to babysit. It's babysitting though. The two of them _babysitting_. There's meaning behind that, which makes it serendipitous and perfect and a bit terrifying. But then again, she is going to use this interaction to try and judge whether or not she should turn her world upside down for Puck so there's not really any way this wouldn't be terrifying no matter what they were doing.

She considers waiting until after school to ask him. Or maybe she'll just text him late tonight. But then Finn comes up to her and asks her if he could do something Friday night. (First, honestly, she forgot how Finn could screw up her Friday-babysitting-with-Puck plans. She just didn't think about him sometimes. Second, she passed by Rachel in the hall earlier and she has to admit that Kurt and Rachel have proven more devious than she thought they were capable. She has a little bit of a new found respect for both of them.) Finn asking to do something the very night she needs him distracted is too much of a sign to ignore and she knows she should just ask Puck now before everything gets messed up (like everything in her life seems to lately) and her plan gets ruined.

So she does it. She catches up with him, asks him what he's doing this Friday (doesn't comment on what would have been his choice of activities- though if she were less nervous she would have rolled her eyes), and she asks (trying to forget about the significance so she can get the words out), "You wanna maybe babysit with me?"

She sees understanding cross his features as his mouth spreads into a smile. He plays it, predictably, cool and just says, "Yeah, sure." But he clearly knows what all of this means. The fact that they're going to spend time together, the fact that they're going to babysit, even the fact that she sought him out this time instead of the other way around.

The warning bell rings and she rattles off details quickly. They part ways and everything is set for Friday night. Two nights from now, she thinks, she's going to decide her future and her daughter's future, for good this time.

-o-o-o-

Friday night is perfect. Well, close enough.

It starts off with Quinn meeting Puck downstairs from Mr. Schue's apartment and then fielding questions from Mr. Schue about why she brought Puck instead of Finn. She's got an answer prepared- Finn's working, but he didn't want her to have to do this alone so he roped Puck into tagging along with her. It irks Puck that Finn comes out as the good guy in her lie, but he tries to remind himself that she asked him there, not Finn, and that's what really matters.

Quinn's not convinced that Mr. Schue's suspicions were completely quelled by her lie, but Kendra, her husband, and her kids bust in and the adults all dash off to dinner before he has time to question her response at all. (Luckily, by the time he returns, he doesn't seem to remember his concern at all.)

Somehow they end up tied up together. Neither of them is quite sure how that happened. They asked the kids what they wanted to do, they said play cowboys and Indians and which do they want to be, and then Puck picked Indians (cause in reality the Indians kicked the cowboy's ass… wait, no, that's not right). The next thing they knew they were ducking behind the couch, things were clearly being destroyed so they blew their "cover" and then they got roped into back-to-back chairs by those surprisingly crafty kids.

Quinn's irritated by this turn of events and she's nearly lost all hope that this evening could possibly turn out well. First, the kids are running a muck. Second, she's losing at cowboy's and Indians to kids who are being raised by _Kendra_- it's pathetic.

Puck isn't bothered by the situation. If he was the same age as these boys, what they're doing is exactly what he'd be doing. What is bothering him though is Mike Chang. He swears sometimes that guy is such a girl. The guy apparently can't get over the fact that just because a girl makes out with him it doesn't mean she wants to date him or even ever make out with him again. And he also didn't seem to get the memo that Wheels totally has claim on Asian Chick. Of course he can't say any of this when Quinn asks him who he's texting (guy code) so he makes up a fairly lame excuse as he ends his texting with Mike by simply telling him to man-up (it's generally pretty good advice, it should work here).

And then they try to get out of their bindings and their hands touch. The night just gets better from there. Hands have kind of always had this significance between them ("_hands, touching hands_"). Not to mention that the touching is significant because there just hasn't been a lot lately- barely any since the night she got pregnant. So it seems to change things, that one brief connection. Suddenly the night got better.

When he gets his guitar he asks her what songs she knows by heart and can sing and she struggles to think of something until he suggests Madonna (recalling how he caught her listening to Madonna and how she defended why she thought she was good). She's surprised he's willing to play Madonna, but she does know several songs by heart and one in particular that's especially appropriate for the moment. So he plays "Papa Don't Preach"- figuring out how to play it by ear in the moment- and she sings it, hoping he gets the message that she feels like she's changing her mind being here with him.

The boys are rapt to her performance and they're putty in her hands after that. They don't even seem to notice Puck, but that doesn't matter much because they're completely willing to do anything she says. It's odd, and a bit concerning, but they are Kendra's (who told her she can drink anything but rum based drinks) kids so it does also seem appropriate.

Quinn gets them to eat healthy, talks them into a bath, and reads them a story to get them to fall asleep. As soon as they do and Quinn quietly shuts the door, she whispers to Puck in the hall, "We have about twenty minutes until everyone should get back. I'll clean up the bathroom and the living room- you take the kitchen and the dinning room."

"Why?" he questions, "We're here to babysit, not clean. Let their parents clean up the mess they made."

"No, we need to clean up," Quinn repeats. Puck raises an eyebrow at her so she begrudgingly admits, "Kendra acted like I wouldn't be able to do this at all and I'm so winning right now. If the apartment is perfect too and there aren't any signs that we had any trouble, then we get to rub it in her face that we were better at taking care of her kids than she is."

"So this is like winning," he processes.

Basically, "Yes."

"Why didn't you just say so? I like making other people feel bad about themselves. I'll meet you to help with the living room when I'm done with the kitchen and the dinning room," Puck says and heads off to clean. Quinn does the same and by the time they've got everything back in its place and looking perfect all the adults come back.

To Quinn and Puck's delight, Kendra and Terri are clearly stunned at how well they obviously did. Quinn can't stop smiling, feeling proud of herself for the first time in a long while.

They linger near the door as they prepare to head out.

Puck knows he hasn't quite won over Quinn yet- or at least she hasn't told him he has so he assumes he hasn't. He needs to keep trying and there's something good he's thinking, so he decides to just say it out loud. He tells her, "You were pretty awesome tonight."

"I was surprised at how I kind of enjoyed it," she responds still smiling. She didn't always enjoy babysitting and with Kendra's triplet monsters she thought she'd hate it, but she enjoyed a lot of aspects of the night. She continues confessing, "I was worried about you at first. You seemed distracted. All that texting to Mike."

"Distracted? I was the opposite babe. I was totally into it," he lies, overcompensating a bit. He enjoyed all time spent with Quinn, but those boys were annoying as hell and he had a feeling they didn't like him and that if Quinn left them alone with him he would have ended up stabbed by them or something. So the babysitting these weird little boys part, he so wasn't into that. But that didn't really matter. Not for what he thinks tonight represented. He adds, "All I know is that we proved something tonight. This parenting thing, we can do this."

Quinn only has time for biting her lower lip as it spreads into a smile in response to his declaration before they're interrupted. Luckily it's by Kendra yelling at them from down the hall (and not someone being close enough to overhear what Puck just said) about not wanting to pay them the agreed upon amount because Quinn is clearly a witch and Puck must be a "male witch." It takes twenty minutes of Mr. Schue arguing on their side for Kendra to finally pay them what she said she would.

Quinn asks for a ride home when they get outside- both of them knowing that he'll have to drop her a few blocks away from the Hudson's so they don't get caught. But as her hand rests on his bench seat right next to his, sides of pinkies pressed next to each other, Puck doesn't feel the usual jealousy he does when he has to acknowledge that Quinn's with Finn and that means they have to act certain ways. She's nearly holding his hand and she didn't turn down his declaration that they could be a family (in fact, it seemed like she smiled), so as far as he's concerned, Puck thinks it's definitely looking like he's going to get his girl (both of them).

It isn't until half an hour later when he's home in his room that he realizes that the night hadn't been perfect at all. In fact, Friday night was a disaster.

-o-o-o-

When Puck gets home, he feels like smiling is hard to resist. He's convinced he's winning with Quinn and he's going to get what he wants- her.

He lays down even though it's only slightly after ten on a Friday night. Dealing with those little monsters tired him out (and it was only for three and a half hours). He almost drifts off to sleep, but the solace of sleep is prevented as what really happened that night begins to occur to him.

Puck thought that he and Quinn proved something tonight. He thought that they proved that they could take care of their kid, they could be her parents. And Quinn really was beyond awesome. She was in control and smart and fun and just perfect. But what did he really do tonight? Not a hell of a lot. He did what Quinn told him to and not anything else nor was what she had him do anything she couldn't have done on her own. In the end, he wasn't needed to prove what they proved tonight.

Thinking of what it was that Quinn proved, Puck thinks that this would be what Quinn's life would be like from now on if they keep the baby, wouldn't it? There'd be no going off to college somewhere near a beach like she wanted or anymore dance classes or anymore cheerleading. There'd be tonight- cleaning up after and taking care of a kid and being exhausted because of all of it. She'd be trapped here. In a town she doesn't like and in a life she's better than.

Puck had never considered any of the things tonight had spurred him to think about. His thinking about their situation had gone as far as: he still wants Quinn + they're having a baby = they should keep her and be a family. Nothing else about their situation, other than if he made it happen they'd need money, had occurred to him. (He's never been able to do anything more than simple math.)

Everything is turning out more complicated than he thought. And that idea that Quinn's future is going to be a lifetime of nights exactly like tonight makes his stomach churn with guilt. He'd known since he found out she was pregnant that what they did, what he let happen and was responsible for, had changed her life. And he knew she lost her family because of it and that her world at school had been turned upside down, but those are present changes and none of the future ones had occurred to him. Now though, he finally understood what a baby would mean for her and everything it is already meaning for her. She's lost everything she had right now and if he really convinces her to keep the baby, he'd be making sure she loses everything she could still have too (everything she should have).

Selfishness has been a reoccurring issue for him and thinking of only himself was definitely what got him to get this far without realizing what everything would mean for her. The thing is though, as he thinks about all the ways the baby would change her life, he knows he doesn't just want Quinn. He'd never really given it much thought before (a habit of his). He knew he wanted her and, scarily enough, in a more permanent way than he'd wanted any other girl- that was enough knowledge of his feelings for him to be satisfied with. Now though, he knows that his feelings go beyond just wanting. He's in love with her. It's a little bit terrifying, because he thought he'd be a bachelor for life and even liked the idea of being one forever. But he's definitely, head-over-feet, in love with Quinn.

This, unfortunately, means that he's got to do what he thinks is right here. He has to make sure she gets what she deserves instead of him getting what he wants like he had previously been trying to make happen. That means that he has to make sure she gives away their baby and he knows that the surest way to do that would be to take himself out of the equation like she originally thought he was when she made the initial decision. So if he makes her think he's the guy everyone else thinks he is, she'll give up their baby and maybe she'll get the future she deserves- the one she would have had if it wasn't for him wanting her so much that he couldn't think straight, couldn't think smart, that night that led to the situation they're in now.

Soon after he reaches this conclusion, he thinks gets a sign that he's right. Santana texts him: _I'm bored. Wanna sext?_ If he sexts Santana and happens to act like he's still babysitting with Quinn, San will get all possessive and confront Quinn, tell her about the sexting, Quinn will confront him and his phone (which shows the date, not the time of his texts) will show that he's not a good guy, definitely not one good enough for her, everything he's worked for will be over and maybe Quinn can get her life back. So, he texts Santana back and unfortunately for Puck everything goes down exactly the way he thinks it will.

-o-o-o-

On Monday morning Quinn goes to school thinking that she'll stay on the fence for a while, but if nothing goes wrong then by the end of the week she's going to tell Finn the truth so she can be with Puck and they can keep the baby.

This idea only lasts a couple of hours until Santana comes up to her locker.

She tries to argue with what Santana's telling her, but she struggles to even do that much- her "I happen to know Puck cares about me" coming out just a bit awkward. Because she doesn't really believe it. As soon as Santana said that Puck was sexting her, Quinn's first thought was, "How could she be so stupid again? How could she trust him again?" She knows Santana lies, frequently, but she believed her because she didn't trust Puck- not after the way things fell apart last time. When it was important, like now, she just didn't trust him and it's probably best she found that out now rather than later.

She confronts him after their scrimmage with the team from the hearing impaired school. She's hopeful that Santana was lying, but she's not surprised when she finds she was telling the truth.

When she grabs after his cell phone, Puck says, "Hey babe… you really don't want to do that." He's been fighting for her for a while and she's smart, he knows that for all this to work the way it's supposed to he's going to have to make excuses for his recent behavior toward her and for what she's going to think he did without any thought to her.

"You lied to me," she states plainly. There should be disbelief in her voice, but after everything with him, there's just not.

"I'm sorry," he says, trying to sound casual because if he really means it (as he does) this could be blown. He rattles on, "I tried to resist Santana. I did. But I'm young and girls have this power over me. But hey, it's all good."

This is starting to feel like Sunday afternoon in his bedroom. "It's definitely not all good," she tells him angrily. None of this makes any sense to her. She was being cautious, making sure he really wanted her this time, that he really wanted the baby. But somehow he wants Santana too? "I thought you wanted to be with me," she tells him confused.

"I do," he retorts instantly, instinctively. He's got to fix that slip quick though because this isn't about what he wants, it's supposed to be about what she deserves. He adds on casually, "Like a lot." And then he puts the nail in his own coffin, " But you haven't given it up to me since the night I knocked you up. Baby, I'm a dude. I have needs." He sees the hurt flash in her eyes, with him talking about that night so crassly, and he doesn't think he's ever felt more like an ass.

There's been a lot of confusion between them in their present and past so Quinn checks, biting out, "You expect to raise a baby with me and text dirty messages to every other girl in school if I don't give it up to you every day?"

He wanted to take it all back. He can see he's hurting her and he hates it. (Hates how much it hurts him too.) But he had good reasons for this and he's already way down this path anyway. He responds, "No. Just the hot girls."

(She feels like crying. Like bursting into tears right here in the hallway. She can't believe she was so wrong about him. Again.)

And now he knows he needs to make the fact that he'd been going after her and them having a family a little more believable so this doesn't seem like a suspicious one-eighty from him. He says, "Look, I'm gonna be a good dad, but I'm not going to stop being me to do it."

So those are her choices? Keep up the lie and give away her baby or keep it with a guy she doesn't know (and doesn't want to know). The pieces of Quinn's heart just keep on breaking with every disappointment, with every abandonment, and she can't take it anymore. Everything would be easier if she just gave up on the things making her life complicated. "No," she tells him, "you won't be a good dad, because you won't be her dad." She breaks down what's going to happen to Puck then. She tells him about Terri and how she had a hysterical pregnancy and didn't have the heart to tell Mr. Schue. She tells him how she's giving Terri the baby- who is a little bit crazy, sure, but Mr. Schue will be a great dad, like she deserves. She tells him this plainly, matter-of-fact like and then adds on to be perfectly clear, "There won't ever be us as a family, there won't ever be a me-and-you, and we won't be keeping her. Don't waste your time trying to change my mind. It won't happen."

It's hard to hear all that (especially when this quiver enters her voice for the last half of it- breaking his heart and making him hate himself for what he's doing). This was the conclusion he was going after though. She doesn't want anything to do with him so she won't keep the baby and give up everything her future could be. Since this was his goal, he doesn't argue and he doesn't trust himself to talk and mess it up so he simply nods in response.

He nods and she doesn't bother waiting around for any more confirmation that he understood everything she said (or wait around for him to fight for her because, clearly, the guy who fought for her wasn't who he really was).

She ducks into the nearest bathroom after leaving him, locks herself in a stall, and cries.

Once she's out of sight, he punches the locker next to his- startling passers by in the process (and really hurting his hand- he's got to stop doing this to himself, he's got to stop doing a lot of things to himself).

-o-o-o-

Quinn tells Terri her decision that evening. She wants to get it over with. She needs to get it settled so maybe she can stop thinking about the huge mistake she almost made with Puck (again).

She hugs Mr. Schue on her way out of his apartment. She's not sure what spurred her to do it, but she just felt like she needed it. She needed a moment where it was clear that some men are kind and just as good as they seem.

She spends the rest of the night missing Finn. He's at work and since she's been pushing him away, it feels like forever since she's even seen him. She doesn't want to think of all the mistakes she almost made (and how some of them would have been repeats of past mistakes), it makes everything hurt more to do that. So instead, she concentrates on missing Finn. She doesn't miss him in the way she's supposed to given that he's her boyfriend, but she misses having someone's hand to hold, having someone who tries to make her laugh, having someone who cares about her. She misses his reliability and goodness- she needs so much more of both in her life.

The next day Mrs. Hudson needs Finn's car so she drops them at school, which doesn't give her the chance to talk to Finn alone. That opportunity doesn't come until brunch when she sees him head for the boys bathroom. She waits outside, prepared to get herself what she really needs right now.

He seems surprised to see her waiting. She offers a timid, "Hi."

He returns it in fashion.

She dives in, asking with more sadness than she should have for the topic, "Can we be in love again?"

Finn guiltily confesses what he did with his Friday night. It makes her feel awful (which is quite an accomplishment given how bad she already felt). He clearly wanted Rachel and felt something for her that he didn't feel for Quinn, yet he didn't do anything. While at the same time Quinn was considering basically settling down with his best friend- the real father of her baby. She shouldn't be doing this to him, she knows it, she's always known it. But she really doesn't have anything else right now.

He hugs her. For once, it feels really good to be in his arms. "I love you Quinn," he says, though he doesn't sound like he really means it.

"I love you too," she returns a little pained, because she knows she doesn't mean it either. She tries to tell herself as they go off to catch up and enjoy each others company that maybe he's using her too. Not as much of course (that'd be impossible), but he seems to need the familiarity of them nearly as much as she does right now. So maybe for just a little while, what she's doing isn't so bad. She tries to ease her mind with that thought as she enjoys Finn's company for the rest of the day.

(Of course the simplicity and meaning behind "True Colors" stirs up a little honesty and regret on both Puck and Quinn's part. But as far as either one of them is concerned, everything between them is over and there's no going back, no fixing. And therefore there's no point even acknowledging the honesty or the regret.)

-o-o-o-

_This is not your baby. _

_This is not your baby. _

_This is not your baby._

Quinn repeats this phrase to herself ten times every morning when she wakes up, twenty times before she goes to sleep at night, and four times an hour throughout the day. This is not going to be her baby, for sure now, so she knows she needs to do everything possible to convince herself of it.

She tries to think of everything she can do to make sure that she doesn't get too attached to the baby. She tries to never think of the baby. She tries to be gender neutral when she does (because the fact that it's a girl- supposedly- does mean something). And a few days after her declaration to Terri she tries to call it names when she does think about it. Calling her female classmates names always seemed to add to her dislike of them and visa versa so, even though she knows it seems like a stupid idea, she tries it out. She tries to think of it as this vicious, bastard child that's taking over her body. (And every morning she wakes up with her hand resting on her stomach in a fashion that can't be described as anything other than loving. Her mission is failing miserably, but she's not ready to realize that yet.)

The whole yearbook trouble arises. She hadn't realized yearbook time was already creeping up. Usually, she liked when it was yearbook picture time. She was photogenic and heavily featured in coveted positions in the yearbook. Not this year though.

Kurt's on a mission to get the entire glee club removed from the yearbook. Considering how the pictures usually get defaced (by her sometimes), she agrees with him and everyone else (sans Rachel and Mr. Schue) that they shouldn't have a picture. (This little gathering is the second time she's been in a room with Puck since everything between them got ruined again. It's not that hard to act okay- she's had a lifetime of practice pretending. It's impossible to feel okay though.)

Santana and Brittany seem to be hanging out with her again. They include her in their yearbook defacing and they had come up and talked to her for a minute or so in between classes for the last couple of days. Quinn was puzzled by it at first. On Monday Santana tore into her about Puck and then Tuesday things were different. She was supposed to be shunned by them- she's not a Cheerio anymore. But suddenly, they were almost friendly (though they'd never really been friends). Quinn doesn't ask them about it though, she's too glad to have someone to spend time with, someone to distract her, to question their motives.

As she sits there and spends time with them though, she's envious of them. She should be envious of their easy happy lives (with apparently some kind of romance/relationship going on because they keep holding hands under the table- and she really should have seen that sooner). Instead, she's envious of their uniforms. With her stomach growing (in her mind greatly and continuously) she feels like she's been sticking out more and more and it makes her feel like she's a target for the whispers and snickers that surround her when she walks down the hall. She never had that when she was in uniform. Not even really that much when everyone knew she was pregnant and she was still a Cheerio. So she wishes she could have that uniform back, for at least a little while, and she needs a distraction from the baby and everything that just almost changed in her life, so she decides to make getting it back her mission.

She's a bit lazy with it at first. Surprisingly she actually has things to keep her busy for the first day after she's decided it. But she decided it on a Wednesday, they had the vote on Thursday and teachers always seemed to like scheduling tests on Friday and studying alone kept her pretty occupied.

But her Friday full of tests is interrupted by someone who reminds her of her mission and surprisingly enough that person is Rachel. Rachel marches up to her in the hall all determined- and wearing some kind of purple smocked like thing that makes her look like a toddler (what happened to resolving that issue?). "Quinn, I'd like to propose the idea that you be my glee co-captain and I have a five item list of reasons for why you should consider it. First-"

"No," she cuts Rachel off. She's not going to be pictured with Rachel in the yearbook representing the glee club. Besides, she has enough going on right now, she doesn't need to add anything else to her long list.

Rachel, predictably, doesn't accept this and continues to argue, "But you've been president of a club and captain of the notable Cheerios- you have leadership skills that could be a great assets to the position of being my co-captain."

"I can't do it," Quinn reiterates. "I have a little too much going on right now," she says as she violates her new rules and runs and hand over her stomach so Rachel gets the picture. Since Rachel is stubborn though she restates it again. "I know I'm probably the last person you asked, but I'm not going to do it. Find someone else."

"You were the first person I asked," Rachel interjects. By way of explanation, she offers, "Looking at everyone's qualifications for such a position, you were the most qualified." Rachel, still not having really given up, tries, "And you know, now I'm going to have to ask Finn to be my co-captain since you didn't accept. As co-captain's we'd be spending an awful lot of time together."

Sometimes Quinn forgets that Rachel is actually pretty smart. And trying to make her jealous probably would have been a good tactic if she were still so desperate to keep Finn. She does still need him, she doesn't have anyone else. But everything has been changing. She realizes that if her plan had worked last week, Finn shouldn't have been so easily coming back to her. Rachel and Kurt were supposed to join forces and break them up and given that Finn clearly really liked Rachel, she has no idea how everything could have gone so wrong that Finn picked her (and both Finn and Rachel have been avoiding each other lately).

Quinn's doing Finn wrong in all this, she's always aware of that. And she needs Finn, until this is all over, she really needs him. But he's a good guy and even if they're not technically together, he'd still be there for her, he'd be her friend- as long as he thinks it's their baby she's giving up. So, if she really lost Finn to Rachel, at least he'd be getting something good out of all this instead of getting screwed over completely. So Quinn sighs and offers, "I think you should ask Finn to be your co-captain. He's still popular and glee club could benefit from having someone popular represent us." Rachel seems stunned at this turn, which, given their history, she understands. Rachel also seems hesitant, like she didn't have any intention of going through with her threat. So Quinn tacks on, "Just wait until Monday to ask him. I'll try to drop hints over the weekend to put it in his mind that it'd be a good idea for him to do it and then you can convince him of it Monday."

Rachel seems unable to comprehend what just happened and it takes her a beat to start talking again. "That's a good idea," she compliments, "I'll do that on Monday. In the mean time though, I believe in equal opportunity and I'll ask everyone else to be my co-captain until someone accepts." Rachel nods once, as if to bid her farewell, and she almost takes a step down the hall, but pauses. She inquires, "Santana wouldn't hit me for asking her? Would she?"

"No," Quinn says, mostly believing she's right. She warns, "But I wouldn't put it past her to torture you in some way for talking to her outside of glee club."

"Right. Maybe I won't ask everyone," Rachel decides. Then in random and slightly odd Rachel-fashion, she adds on formally, "Thank you for the advice. Have a nice weekend."

The whole exchange with Rachel stays on her mind all weekend. Of all the people to remind her of who she was, who she is, it's surprising that it was Rachel Berry. But Rachel had a point about her, she was a leader. She had been longing for the sense of belonging, and at the same time distance, that her cheer uniform used to give her. Now though, she realizes that she's been longing for her assertive self too. The one who was in charge of her life (and others), the one who made decisions and knew what she wanted and how to get it. So trial run in getting what she wants again- she's going to make herself a Cheerio again, just like she had decided a couple of days ago.

On Monday morning Quinn adds on to her morning mantra that she will become a Cheerio again and she'll be pictured with them in the yearbook. She'd feel more comfortable in her mission if she knew what she were doing though. She tells herself that she'll make it happen, but she'd feel better about it if she had any idea how she was going to make it happen. She needs an opportunity, something to come up to give her inspiration, but pictures are on Friday so she can't wait around for it for long.

Finn tells her after school that day that he's going to be Rachel's co-captain for glee. He says it like he expects her to be upset about it, but she just smiles and tells him it's great. Then, he looks disappointed, like he wanted her to tell him not to do it. But she writes that off and figures she's paying too close attention (after all, she's still constantly trying to distract herself from the baby). Her suspicions are confirmed the next day though when Rachel calls a glee club meeting after school and calls Finn out on not showing up for the picture as she informs them of a new opportunity.

It's exciting- the commercial. But as Rachel tells them about it she can't help but wonder about Finn. He's possibly been the only person who hasn't disappointed her lately, the only one who's come through. Why isn't he doing that for Rachel? It's obvious who he wants more. She wonders if this is some issue she's inspired in him by what she's doing to him, or if this is just his own issue. Whatever it is, she doesn't have time to think about it. They're filming a commercial- now.

The initial commercial concept is really lame, but Rachel takes charge and it all gets changed into something better. Her stomach won't show in it, she's grateful that things managed to work out that way. But part of her almost wants it to show- just in case her parents happen to see the commercial, she wants them to see how _they're _surviving.

She chats with Artie and Kurt a bit in between takes and she has fun throughout the entire process. Actually, she has a lot of fun. And she feels like she's a part of something special and she doesn't feel like she wants to distance herself from anyone for a change (except Puck- who it's still hard to be around). She doesn't process what all this means yet though.

Quinn continues on her mission. Since, after four days now, she didn't have any idea of how to get back on the team she decides she might as well try demanding it and tells Coach Sylvester that she will be back on the team and in the Cheerio's picture. Coach Sylvester tells her the bad news about glee violating the glee club rules (so full of sarcasm that it takes her a second to realize what's actually being said), but as soon as the woman is marching away from her thinking she was victorious, Quinn has a realization and now she knows how to make her mission a reality.

Quinn hangs around the school office to gather some information- the ladies in there are huge gossips so it's an easy way to find out what's really going on. (They say that Mr. Schue using one of the mattresses was the rule violation that will disqualify them. They also say that he stayed at school last night because he had some huge fight with his wife, they didn't seem to know what about. It worries her- the two of them fighting. What if he learned the truth?) After she gets the necessary information to carry out her plan, Quinn gets the rest of it in order. She didn't pack her saved cheer uniform when she left her parents house and she doesn't want to go back there. Thankfully, she knows Brittany's locker room locker combination and she had a couple of extra uniforms in it. Luckily, she's able to get it zipped up (it took a lot of prayer and deep breaths and struggling to do so, but she made it). She gets the uniform secured, her hair appropriate, and heads for Coach Sylvester's office.

When she gets to Coach Sylvester's, Quinn makes the planned on threat and she defends her appearance. It works, just like she wanted. But as Coach Sylvester concedes she doesn't feel good about herself.

She interjects the part about the glee club, figuring that if she helped them out too she'd feel right. Glee club has been the best thing in her life lately, the people in it included, so as she was here and realized she had the opportunity to help, she wanted to. But it doesn't cure her feeling that something is off here, that this still isn't right.

Coach Sylvester rambles on about her ruthlessness appreciatively and she feels a bit better about herself.

But at the same time, she starts to wonder what's going to happen next? She stands behind other girls in the Cheerio picture so her baby bump is hidden? She sits by at every single one of their practices? Impractically and ridiculously in uniform despite her obvious inability to participate?

And this won't be her little girl, but what if she finds out she's hers someday? What if she goes looking for information about her birthmother? A yearbook is easy to find and is this the person that she wants to be if she's ever found by that daughter that won't be hers? A girl who hid her pregnancy behind girls who don't like her and who she always felt so detached from?

She changes her mind. She pauses in the doorway and says, "You know what? I don't think I want to be a Cheerio after all. I don't want to be on a team where I only appear to belong. I'd rather be a part of a club that's proud to have me. Like glee club."

Quinn feels really good about herself as she changes out of the cheer uniform. The school day isn't even over yet and look at everything she accomplished. Furthermore, she feels great about her decision. Pretending to be the head cheerleader for so long and being so lost lately had gotten her confused. She didn't miss the position or all of the pretending it required her to do. She missed feeling like herself (even though that only used to come every so often) and she missed being in control of her life. But she just made this progress so hopefully missing those things will be a thing of the past because she'll continue to live them.

After school Mr. Schue calls a glee club meeting to let them know that they're getting a picture in the yearbook (he doesn't say who it's thanks to- he doesn't seem to know). It's scheduled for an hour and a half from now here in the choir room and they're all welcome to hang out until then or just come back.

Then he tells them the good/bad news. He's off the team, he's not going with them to sectionals, but they get to go. Brittany pries about why he used a mattress and he answers simply that he had an argument with his wife, nothing to worry about, everything was fine, and he had just needed some place to go. (His explanation sounds similar to the office ladies' speculative gossip. But Quinn's still not convinced. She even thinks he's looking at her a bit differently. Like maybe he knows. But if he's not saying anything, she supposes nothing matters until he does- if he does.)

Finn rushes off after the meeting ends so he can get his check from work and cash it before the pictures because afterwards he probably won't make it before the bank closes. He's gone before she can tell him that she was hoping for a ride to the mall. In her last couple of classes of the day she had realized that what she came to school in today wasn't especially picture worth. Her shirt was okay, but it was long and thankfully so because she had her pants unbuttoned and being held together by a rubber band. And if this picture is potentially one her daughter could one day find of her, she doesn't want to look like she does right now. Actually, she thinks she should finally venture into the maternity store at the mall; she was at peace with her condition and who she was right now, so this seemed like the right move.

She walks outside to the nearest city bus stop and discretely counts her money in her wallet. She had sold some of her fancy party dresses that she no longer had any use for to a consignment shop in town last weekend so she had a bit of money. She had thought she'd give it to Mrs. Hudson to start paying her back for taking care of her, but she'll just have to sell more stuff to do that because this seems really important right now. She wants to be the person she is, she doesn't want to pretend in this photo.

She's stirred from her thoughts by the honking of a horn. A familiar black SUV has pulled up in front of her. Kurt calls from the window, "And where exactly are you sneaking off to?"

"The mall," she answers honestly. She explains, as she realizes it may seem like a random time to be trying to hurry to the mall on public transportation, "I needed to get something for the photo later."

"Well you're never going to make it taking the bus. Get in, I'm going there anyway. I ran out of my Clinique face wash this morning and I cannot go without it for more than twelve hours- I have a very strict skin care regimen."

Quinn hesitates. It's nice of Kurt to offer, but she feels like she'd be taking advantage (which she just did to him the week before last). "Thank you, but-" she begins turning him down.

He interrupts in a huff, "Just get in. We don't have all day."

She does as he said and gets in his car, still a bit timidly. They've talked a bit in groups of other glee clubbers, but other than that the only other time they talked was when she manipulated into him doing something for her. Thankfully, Kurt doesn't seem to care about that as instead of bringing any of it up or letting the car fill with tense silence, he asks her questions about her skin care regimen and other products she uses until they're at the mall.

They part ways when they enter the mall, Kurt on a mission of his own, and he leaves her simply saying that he'd see her at his car in thirty minutes.

She heads to the maternity store. She hesitates before going in. She was too afraid to shop for maternity clothes before, but she takes a deep breath and walks in with her head held high. She's pregnant, but it doesn't define her and maybe some things in her life are worse thanks to her being pregnant, but she's not. So she browses the racks thoughtfully, not ashamed to spend ample time here. Until she realizes she doesn't have time to spend ample time here and ends up having to grab a simple white dress that's practical since it will fit for a few more months to come. It wasn't exactly what she had in mind (white wasn't her first choice of a color), but it'll do.

She heads back to school with Kurt and changes into her dress in a bathroom stall as the other girls primp and prep in front of the mirror. She smiles proudly throughout the pictures because she feels good about herself today. She accomplished more than she set out to and finally felt like she found a bit of clarity (maybe not about any of the issues she really wanted to, but it was clarity all the same).

In all, it was a good day and Quinn hopes that it's a sign that many more good days will be in her future. (At this point, she should really know better than to think that.)

-o-o-o-

Puck had not had a good week. Two weeks in a row now he hadn't had a good week. He knew it'd be hard to let Quinn go, to stop going after her, but he's let her be with someone else before, he didn't think it'd be this bad when he's already lived through the experience. He doesn't let himself acknowledge it (often), but with the cold way she looks at him (and doesn't look at him) and with the certainty that they'll never be together, it hurts to breath in and out all day long. He joins a fight club by the end of the first week just so he can feel some other sort of pain.

On Sunday before he starts his second week of feeling more awful than he ever has, his sister follows him into his bedroom as he comes home from his second fight club meeting in two days.

"You look like crap," Kelyn tells him bluntly.

"So do you," he returns teasing. He checks himself out in his mirror, looking for any visible cuts or bruises despite the club's rule about no-face hitting. He's good. Though Kel had a point, he didn't look so great despite being free of cuts or bruises. It's the bags under his eyes that are doing it- he hadn't been getting much sleep lately, guilt getting to him too much to let him rest. He doesn't want to spend anymore time thinking about that though so he distracts himself by asking, "What are you doing in my room? I don't remembering inviting you."

"You didn't," Kelyn answers simply. It wasn't like he'd kick her out, he never did. But she came because things had been worrying her lately. One of the reliable things in her life had been changing and it seemed so different right now, it scared her. Confronting that fear, she asks her older brother, "I thought you said I'd understand soon. I don't. You seem even more different- talking even less at dinner and hardly ever here. What's going on?"

Puck hates that he made his sister worry. He hates that he hasn't been hiding what he's been going through well enough so that it didn't affect her. She shouldn't have to deal with any of this. After what he did last week though, it doesn't look like she'll have to. He tells her honestly, "You know how I said I was trying to fix things?" She nods and he continues, "There's no more fixing things. It's just not possible." He can't leave his ten-year old sister with that bleak idea about whatever she's thinking is going on with him. She shouldn't know life can be so hopeless, not yet, not ever. So he adds on, trying to sound normal, happy, "But everything's going to be okay anyway. I promise, I'll be around more, things will be normal."

Kelyn looks at her older brother skeptically, but her egghead never lied to her. So she accepts, "Okay, if you say so." She leaves him then, satisfied that things in her life will stop changing in scary ways.

Puck hates lying to his sister. He hates lying to his mom. He hated lying to Quinn. He used to lie all the time, he depended on it even. It got him far and he was good at it. Now, he hates that he's good at it. He hates that he does it. He hates that the people he's been finding himself lying to most are the people he loves the most. He thinks maybe it's ironic, but he's never been certain of the definition.

Monday morning brings him a sign that things are getting worse, because how could Rachel waiting by his locker be a good thing?

When he's still five feet away from his locker, she begins assertively, "Noah I have a proposition for you."

"If you're propositioning me shouldn't you be dressed like you were week before last?" he jumps in. It's the expected type of response from him. Not to mention that snarky responses were as close as he was getting to real fun lately. (Even glee club hadn't been making him feel better- with its yearbook issue and the presence of the girl who stopped acknowledging his because he made things that way.)

Rachel seems offended for half a second before she responds, "Noah, we both know that I'm not the girl you notice around here- no matter what I'm wearing or offering. And speaking of offering, how would you like to be my co-captain for glee?"

His jaw clenches at her insinuation. But if he responds to it he knows he'd just be encouraging that kind of talk. So he simply firmly responds to her proposal instead, "No."

"Okay," she accepts with a smile.

Rachel Berry isn't going to be stubborn and annoying? That can't be right. "Okay?" he questions.

"Yes," she answers. She reveals, "I knew you wouldn't do it. No one wants to do it."

That's logical, but for Rachel Berry it still seems way too easy. "You think you're going to rope Finn into doing it, don't you?" he asks knowingly, because why wouldn't she fight for anyone to be her co-captain if she's so aware that none of them want to. Unless she thought she could get the co-captain she wanted (which had to be Finn), he was pretty sure this wouldn't be going down like this.

She stumbles in surprise, "I…have reason to believe that, yes."

"Still going after that, huh?" he asks, shaking his head a little at her like she's the one that's pathetic here.

"And you're still not going after it, even though you want to," she responds, just as knowing as him.

His fists clench and he glares at her.

She takes that as her cue to leave and ignores their moment of near honesty as she wraps up, "Have a good day Noah. Thank you for your time."

A good day? Like that was possible now. (Like it was possible to begin with given what he did to Quinn standing right here exactly a week ago.)

Nothing particularly bad happens the rest of the week (until Friday with Mr. Schue), but Puck's week still manages to suck. He should be psyched- he's in a commercial. His mom caught it airing the day after they did it and she was excited about it- hugged him, said she was proud of him, and that they had to find it to record so they could show it to his grandma. (It made his stomach lurch violently when she used that word- proud. If she ever knew the truth, all the things he'd done, she'd probably never use it again and regret every time she had said it.) Still, the week dragged on and felt like it got worse and worse without any specific reason until there was a reason- Mr. Schue would be out of glee club.

The weekend following the Friday after Mr. Schue makes the unfortunate announcement isn't much different than the last weekend. He goes to his fight club both Saturday and Sunday because for a little while getting hit and getting hurt distracts him from all the hurt he's knowingly inflicted on everyone he cares about (the amount of which just seems to keep growing).

-o-o-o-

Terri Schuester doesn't answer Quinn's calls all weekend. Her sister Kendra doesn't answer her calls either. Which leaves Quinn to worry and stress and wonder whether she still has someone to give the baby to. Mr. Schue slept at the school and admitted to having a fight with his wife and given what Quinn knew she was hiding from him, the fact that he found out the truth and fought about it seemed likely. If they did she really needs to know as soon as possible because they were her entire plan for the baby.

By the time Sunday afternoon rolls around and no one has answered her calls, Quinn considers dropping by Mr. Schue's apartment. She'd go to Kendra instead (it'd be safer), but she has no idea where she lives and she's not listed. She ultimately decides that she can't risk going to Mr. Schue's because what if he and his wife fought about something else and had made up and he was there? She'd have to come up with a reason for being there on the spot and doubted that in her current state of mind she'd think of anything believable.

Mr. Schue seems fine on Monday- sad about glee club, but fine. It doesn't seem like he spent the weekend or the previous night at the school so Quinn tries to convince herself that that means he must be back with Terri and he therefore must not have learned the truth. If he knew she was going to give him her baby he'd confront her anyway, right? And crazy as Terri is, if she knew she wasn't taking Quinn's baby, she'd tell her immediately, right?

(Yeah, she's not so sure of the answers either.)

But the week seems to go smoothly. Monday passes fine, then Tuesday and Wednesday. Maybe she'll actually start believing that everything is indeed okay, that life is getting easier.

Of course, then there's Thursday. The day goes fine, but after school they have a glee practice. Since Mr. Schue is supposed to be out of glee, they're trying to practice one of their old routines together, just to see how it goes without Mr. Schue. But suddenly Quinn finds her feet flying out from under her. Then she's flat on her back and Finn is on her left side and Puck on her right. They're both lightly touching her (Puck's hand is on her shoulder).

"Is it the baby? Is it coming?" Finn asks worriedly.

"I think we're supposed to get hot towels," Puck tells Finn and he seems just as worried.

"Would you both just shut up?" she snaps. "There's like sweat on the floor. I slipped. I'm fine." It was kind of bitchy of her, but she had to put a stop to what was happening as fast as possible.

After she says it, she stands back up on her own (not accepting help from either boy) and repeats Mr. Schue's phrase (even though Rachel had been taking charge so far), "From the top." Everyone seems wary of not listening to her so they get back in their places for the start of the routine (she really would have been a good co-captain).

She tries to focus for the rest of practice because she needs to seem okay to everyone, but it's so hard after what just happened. She knows she's fine. Maybe she'll have a bruise, but she's fine. She doesn't know if the baby's fine though.

After practice she has Finn drive her directly to his house. She goes to her room, gets on her laptop, and goes to one of the pregnancy sites she's been frequenting. She finds out that falls won't likely harm the baby, especially the way she fell or at this point in the pregnancy. She reads the words a dozen times over, but they don't ease her worries much. So she finds the same thing on all the other sites she's been reading about pregnancy and reads the same sentiment on each of them several times. After she does, she starts to feel a bit better. They all mention that spotting could mean trouble (though it always could during pregnancy) so she should see a doctor if it happens and mention the fall. But that hasn't happened and she prays it doesn't, prays everything is indeed okay as the websites suggest.

Then she realizes that she spent hours worrying. She spent hours worrying about a baby that she's not really supposed to care about because she's not going to be hers. And she knew she cared before today. She knew that she was always concerned about her well-being. But knowing and experiencing it are two different things. She can ignore knowing- to a point- but there's no ignoring today, how much she already loves her.

And thinking of things that love the baby…what was going on with Puck today? Her mind had been occupied by more serious worries since the fall, but that question had been there nagging her still. He wasn't supposed to care about her- he wanted other girls. He wasn't supposed to care about the baby because he wasn't at all the guy she thought he was. So what was he doing racing halfway across the room to her and touching her and looking so worried about them? He wasn't supposed to care at all- she'd made big decisions based on accepting that (or at least trying to).

She stops her thoughts there, after only spending twenty minutes on him. She can't let herself go down that path of wondering about him and how he feels- not again. She doesn't have the energy and she doesn't feel like she has any more heart left to break. So she can't give him another chance no matter what and if she can't do that then she might as well stop thinking about him all together.

-o-o-o-

Neither one of them sees Friday coming.

Everything had been going relatively smoothly for a little while. With the exception of Mr. Schue finding out she was going to give her baby to him, Quinn hadn't had much to worry about. And even with that she didn't have to worry about her biggest secret, because no one involved in that knew the truth. It seemed like _the truth_, had been pretty safe from discovery for a while now.

Then Rachel comes up to Quinn at her locker. (She's reviewing her answers to her homework because with worrying about the baby and thoughts of Puck's actions the previous day sneaking up on her as she was doing it, she knows she was probably too distracted to do everything right.) She's far from calling Rachel a friend, and maybe it was just that she had far more serious and worrisome things to think about lately, but she doesn't take Rachel approaching as the ominous sign she used to.

"I know it's not my place," Rachel begins, and Quinn thinks that it's progress for Rachel that she's acknowledging that, "but have you had your doctor run the full genetic test panel on your unborn child?" That catches Quinn's attention more so than possibly anything else Rachel has ever said to her. Rachel rambles on as she usually does, explaining something about her cousin Leon and T-sacks and a fifty-percent chance of a child getting this "horrible" disorder if the parent is a carrier.

Quinn begins to panic. She's never heard of anything like that. Her doctor mentioned tests but didn't break them down for her much (she doesn't think- she was pretty freaked out and nervous throughout that first appointment) and all he said was that the results were fine. "My doctor didn't mention that," she finds herself confessing worriedly.

Rachel looks guilty, but Quinn's too concerned about the baby to notice. She's also far too worried to notice that Rachel's quick back peddling and mentioning of how at least one the baby's parents would have to be Jewish to be a carrier of the mentioned disease was something she should be suspicious of.

She has to find Puck, now. She hadn't talked to him and really hadn't planned on interacting with him again (yesterday being a one time exception) but she doesn't have a car and her doctor is out of town so she needs a ride and Finn can't find out about the test because then he'd figure out the truth. It should be weird talking to Puck again, but there are more important things than awkwardness right now so she finds Puck in the choir room (as they're supposed to be- there's going to be an announcement) walks right up to him (lucky he's away from everyone else) and gets right to the point telling him, "Rachel just told me about her cousin who's baby was at risk for some horrible genetic disease because he's Jewish. And I never mentioned to my doctor about you being Jewish so I'm pretty sure he didn't run the test for it. You have to take me to get those Jewish baby tests."

Puck was shocked she came up to him. She had barely looked at him since he made sure things would be that way. And he's glad she's talking to him and wants him to do something for her and the baby. But still, this sounds suspicious. His mom never seemed concerned about some genetic Jewish disorder when she was pregnant with his sister and he doesn't remember any other Jewish people he knows ever mentioning anything like that. "Why? Is that even a real thing?" he asks. He may not be too smart and he knows she's smarter, but this doesn't seem right so he had to check. (Besides, he's not supposed to really care about them. Yesterday was a slip up. When he thought something was wrong he couldn't help himself, but he knows if he's going to keep pulling off his previous lies, he needs to stop slipping.)

Even though she's pretty scared right now, she can still think clearly enough to lie (she can't care about the baby- _their baby_- not in front of him). "Because if something is wrong with the baby Terri Schuester isn't going to take it and I can't ask Finn, he'll know something's up."

He's going to do it. Of course he's going to do. But she's supposed to think he's a complete ass so he responds, "Does this have to happen tonight? Because I have my fight club."

Well, at least it seems like yesterday was a fluke and he's continuing to live up to who he, unfortunately, proved to be.

Mr. Schue comes in with Ms. Pillsbury and they get interrupted from her telling him that it has to happen tonight (she doesn't want to wait) and from him giving in.

After Mr. Schue makes his announcement and Ms. Pillsbury takes over and Mercedes proves to Rachel that she can do a better ballad, most of them hang around talking about sectionals tomorrow (and a bit about the fact that it was Ms. Pillsbury that ended up as Mr. Schue's replacement- could they be any more obvious?). Quinn doesn't go over to Puck- even though Finn left the room, it'd be kind of suspicious to go directly to him when they had already been talking before the meeting. She's glad he seems to be on the same page of hanging around and talking to other people until they disperse and they can continue what they were talking about more privately (they could just both leave, but that could end up looking suspicious too).

It happens so fast- Finn running back into the room and punching Puck in the face, catching him off guard enough to knock him on his back. Rachel comes through the door after Finn, going mostly unnoticed since Finn follows Puck to the floor and continues to hit him.

_He knows_. It may have happened fast and unexpectedly, but Quinn thinks that just as quickly as it happens. There's only one reason Finn would attack Puck like that (only one reason he'd attack anyone like that), so he has to know the truth. Tears start to stream down her face. It's all over now. She's lost everything else her life once held. Reputation, cheerleading, parents, home, Puck (twice), and now her last ally, last safety, only friend.

As soon as he feels the first hit (and notices it was from Finn), Puck knows that Finn knows the truth. He'd been jealous of Finn for a while now, he'd been angry with Finn for a while now- having everything he wanted. He's not tempted to hit back though. Instead, he just tries to block the punches so he doesn't end up coming home looking too awful (it'd scare Kelyn and his mom) and he lets Finn hit him. After all, feeling like he deserves to get the crap beat out of him for everything he's done is one of the reasons he joined and frequented a fight club.

This is a school though and they're not too keen on students fighting so it's not too long before Mr. Schue comes in and pulls Finn off Puck- Matt helping to restrain him.

"Tell the truth!" Finn demands, enraged.

On the slim chance that Finn doesn't know the truth that Puck thinks he knows, he's sure as hell not going to admit to it. So Puck responds, "Punk just walked in and sucker punched me." Technically it was what happened.

"Don't play dumb. You're too freaking dumb to play dumb," Finn stumbles in his insult, too angry to put words together well. And too angry not to try and charge after Puck again as he says it and has to be restrained again.

Because she needs to know who made this happen, Quinn asks through her tears, "Who told you this Finn?" (She doesn't need to say what he was told. Everyone here who matters already knows what "this" is.)

"Obviously it was Rachel," Kurt quickly volunteers (like she wouldn't have thrown him under the bus had the situation been reversed).

"Wha-" she fumbles, "I didn't do anything."

"Yeah it was Rachel," Finn supplies easily, "But I want to hear it from you. I want to hear it from both of you." The edge to his voice grew the more he spoke.

Trying to prevent anyone from getting hurt (more), Mr. Schue advises, "Finn, just calm down."

"No!" he explodes again. "They're both lying to me!" He calms a bit again and demands, "Is it true? Just tell me. Is it true?"

She knows that there's a decent chance that she could convince him that a paternity test couldn't be done until the baby was born (he'd bought the hot tub thing). Convincing him of that could be easier if she first plead that it wasn't true, that Puck couldn't possibly be the father. She supposes she could even trust Puck to go along with that since he has so far. So, this doesn't have to be the end. She could keep this going a while longer if she works hard enough.

She knew the second she realized he knew though, she wasn't going to try and talk her way out of this. Finn has never deserved anything she's done to him. And she's felt so horribly guilty for doing everything to him that she's not sure she could live with herself if she continued it much longer (she knew she would have if she hadn't been caught- she didn't have any other options anymore). So as much as she hates to admit to him that she knowingly hurt him and continued to do so she has to break his heart now, she's going to. She takes five steps forward, so she's not hiding behind anyone else, and confesses painfully, "Yes."

Puck thought it seemed like Finn was asking him to answer too, but he wasn't going to answer first. Lying to Finn about the baby being his was all Quinn's thing- she wanted it, she wanted him to keep it up. He figured he had to let her take lead on this (even though the whole thing was tempting him to just say both girls were his and finally give in to what he's wanted to do since this whole thing began), she had to make the call about whether they still tried to lie or whether she gave Finn up.

Honestly, after the way things had been going between them and especially after what he did a few weeks ago, he expected she'd try to lie so she could keep Finn. Then, to his surprise, she confesses. He nods his head, confirming the same, because he felt like he needed to admit to it same as her (because even if the whole thing was her idea, he's felt just as guilty for it). She surprises him even further a second later with her next admission. (It's the first time he's heard her articulate these words and considering the situation he should feel really bad, but he can't help that it makes him feel good to hear her say it- though luckily he is able to hide that good feeling.)

She needed to declare it. A simple confirmation wasn't enough. No more wussing out on this. So she adds on in her confessing, confirming everything for Finn, "Puck is the father."

"All that stuff in the hot tub… you just made that up?" Finn questions reminding Quinn of the lengths she went to to get him to this place.

Puck knows he doesn't need to give Finn any more reasons to hate him. Truly, he knows that…later. Now, Finn's tone sounds so accusing, so disgusted, that he finds himself adding lighter fluid to the fire of Finn's hatred of him by saying, "You were stupid enough to buy it." (He's known since the beginning that if Finn had just been smarter, none of this would be happening like it is. The situation they're all in would be entirely different- better, he thinks.)

Finn comes at Puck again enraged (Quinn is in between them and even though Finn is probably the best person she knows, she thinks he's coming after her and squeezes her eyes shut- so even more tears spill down her cheeks- and flinches at the tone of his voice. She knows, no matter how horrible he acts right now, no matter what he says to her or does to her, it's all her fault. He never would have been this person without her.) Mr. Schue had restrained Finn again and she knows it won't make a difference to him right now, but she needs him to know that this isn't what she wanted. She offers sincerely through her sobs, "I'm so sorry."

"Screw this," Finn declares, "I'm done with you. I'm done with… I'm done with all of you." (He had pointed at Quinn when he said he was done with her and the way he looked at her while he did it reminds her of the way her dad looked at her when he said he didn't know who she was.) Finn storms out, kicking a chair in the process.

Quinn stands in the same spot and continues to cry. She looks away from the spot he was last in, unable to stand the memory of the last few moments, what she did to him. But she's surrounded by people who, she assumes, must think even worse of her than the already did and she can't stand the potential judgment, not right now. She flees the room out the other exit quickly.

Puck wants to go after her. But he's messed everything up for her and between them so many times he's not sure she'd want to see him. He thinks he needs to process everything (because everything is different now) so he can have something real to tell her, something honest.

He's interrupted from thinking about that by Mr. Schue reminding him that everyone in glee just saw what happened when he speaks up, "Okay. I don't want you guys to worry about tomorrow. I'll talk to Finn and I'll find you a replacement just in case- I'll make sure you can compete. For now, for the rest of you, I think the best thing to do is give some space to the people who were just…involved in what happened. Okay?" He gets a few nods in response and gestures Ms. Pillsbury to leave with him.

Puck stands there in a room full of people who probably think the worst of him now (which is saying something because he knew their opinion of him wasn't good already). He wants to make a move for an exit, but he thinks it may look weak of him to leave- like he's running from them.

Mercedes comes up to him and lays things out for him, "Look, most of the club already knew all that about you and Quinn 'cause I kind of told them about what you told me. And we've been keeping that secret because we don't want to lose any members. We already lost Finn and we can't afford to replace anyone else so you better not ditch us now that the truth is out. Clear?"

That wasn't what he was expecting and he honestly hadn't considered leaving (hadn't considered much of anything at this point), but he nods and responds simply, "Yeah."

Mercedes, Kurt, Tina, and Artie file out of the choir room after that (Rachel is missing from the room suddenly also). Apparently everyone else left in the room is waiting to talk to him too and Santana gets to him, Brittany tagging along after her, before Mike and Matt. She gets right to the point, "Did you cheat on me with Quinn one of the times we tried to actually be 'together?"

"No," he responds honestly.

"Really?" she checks, in that tone she has where she sounds like she's thinks she's talking to an idiot.

"Yeah," he repeats. By the baffled look on her face, he guesses and asks, "Why, did you cheat on me?"

"Constantly," she admits easily. "They were attempts at a high school relationship and high school relationships don't count- they're not real relationships. Just like sex between two people doesn't mean they're dating- they don't mean anything either, not really," Santana explains to him like he's pathetic for not knowing it.

"Yeah, if sex were dating we'd be dating," Brittany chimes in with a gesture to her and Santana.

"Are you going to say that every time I mention that sex isn't dating?" Santana snaps.

"I said it before?" Brittany questions confused.

Santana rolls her eyes at her friend and tells her, "Come on." Before she heads for the door, she adds to Puck, "You're a lot sappier than I thought. It's pathetic."

Santana and Brittany huh? That was a really distracting thought. Apparently for the two boys who overheard it as well as it takes them a minute to approach Puck as they had been waiting.

Matt starts off, "We helped keep Finn from beating you, but we didn't know the situation. Now that we do, it seems like maybe we should have let him do whatever he wants. But you're both our teammates and you're both our friends. We won't pick sides, but if something like this happens again, if you give us a reason to, we'll make sure neither one of you gets hurt."

"You sleep with her because she was Finn's?" Mike asks bluntly.

"No," Puck answers honestly. He may have spent a lot of time jealous of Finn, but that was never the reason for anything between him and Quinn.

"Drunken mistake?" Matt asks.

"No," he answer truthfully again.

They exchange a glance, seeming to be struggling for what to ask next (apparently the expected a yes to one of the previous questions- after all, he was Puck).

Mike raises an eyebrow as he asks, "You…care about her?"

"Yeah," Puck admits. Both boys seems surprised at that and given his history he can't blame them.

"Well, that's enough details for me. I've known Quinn forever- hearing more would be…weird," Matt concludes. He declares, "Since it wasn't just some random thing or something done to hurt anyone, we're cool."

"Yeah," Mike concurs.

"Thanks guys," Puck offers gratefully. He thought everyone would turn on him when they found out the truth.

They leave him then, alone in the choir room. It was a really good thing they stuck around to ask him these questions now though because they helped him realize some things. Before, when Quinn so easily had a way out of this mess (a hard one, but still a way), he thought it was selfish of him not to make sure she took it. And he couldn't be selfish (when his dad left them, that's what he was doing, being selfish). But now, things were different. Now she didn't have anyone to help her through this. No matter what happened, whether they give up the baby so Quinn can have the future she deserves or she decides to keep her, Quinn will need someone and if he makes sure he's there for her, the person she needs could be him. Yeah, okay, he wants to be the person she needs because he wants her and maybe that is a little selfish of him. But in the end she'll still need someone now that she lost everyone else (their little girl will need someone too), and he's not going to be the guy who isn't there for the people he wants as his family (as his father wasn't there for his actual family). So now he knows what he's going to tell her, he just has to find her.

-o-o-o-

Quinn finds a quiet alcove a few wings away from where the choir room is. It takes her about fifteen minutes to stop crying and thankfully no one bothers her. After she's finished crying (for now) she sits and thinks.

Things are different now. The baby's not Finn's so she doesn't _have_ to give her up. She doesn't have anything though. No home, no family, no money. So she can't really keep the baby either. She rests a hand on her stomach, closes her eyes, and takes a slow deep breath. Her life is a disaster and she can't stand it being like that any longer. She needs to take control of her life again and start fixing things (as much as they can be fixed).

Rachel comes up to her then. "I'm so sorry," she begins genuinely, "I fully understand if you want to beat me up. If you can just try and avoid my nose." She squeezes her eyes shut waiting for impact.

Rachel, surprisingly, had been one of the things to cross her mind in all of her thinking. Given Rachel's motives, she should probably hate her. But she doesn't. The truth needed to come out, she's known that since the beginning. It was wrong that she lied to him in the first place, she had just been so alone. Besides, she knows that glee and competing in sectionals was about equally important to Rachel as Finn and now, because she let the truth out now, that may not happen. So Rachel already had to be suffering plenty. "I'm not mad at you," Quinn tells her evenly. She confesses, trying to control her tone so she doesn't start crying again, "All you did was what I wasn't brave enough to do. Tell the truth."

"I-" Rachel begins, stumbles, and sits down beside her as she finds her words, confessing too, "I was selfish when I told him. I wanted to break you two up so he would want to be with me."

"And now neither of us have him," Quinn says, knowing that the ways they wanted to have him was different but that thanks to their own actions they both lost him all the same. She can feel her eyes start to water as she says regretfully, "I have hurt so many people." She knows that her actions have hurt a lot of people and that she could never make up for the things she's done. It seems odd to her, that this is the person she is- one who's caused so much pain- because it's so far from the person she wants to be, the one she feels like she's kept trying to be. "Can you go now?" she asks Rachel as nicely as she can. She appreciates the gesture of her sitting there with her, especially given their history, but she feels like she's going to burst into tears again at any second and she's tired of breaking down in front of people and she just can't do it again right now. "I just really want to be alone," she adds to make sure it's clear that this has nothing to do with how she feels about Rachel because she really doesn't need to hurt anyone else.

Rachel's nice enough to leave without another word.

Puck passes Rachel in the hall where he's finally found Quinn. It seems like Rachel was just with her, which doesn't seem like it could be a good thing. (As Rachel passes him, she gives him this look. Like she knew there was more to him, more to him and Quinn, than he had let on and like she's disappointed in him for not telling her. Or maybe it's just that she looks like she understands everything that's ever happened between them- dating, breaking up, all conversations. He's not sure which it is- kind of hopes for neither.)

"Hey," Puck says as he sits down next to Quinn. He's nervous. He's going to declare something pretty big here. And he knows that with what he said before and how he acted, it's not going to make much sense, but he's got to do it anyway and just hope she gives him the chance to explain everything. "So I know you're upset now," he begins, "but I want to be with you. And I'm going to do everything I can to be a good dad to our baby." He would add that he'd do it if she wants him to, but he feels like he needs to tell her what he really wants (which is to know his daughter- even if the idea of being responsible for her at this point in his life still terrifies him). So he swears these things to her and hopes she recognizes how serious he is.

"Thanks," she says. She knows this contradicts the impression she got of him a few weeks ago, but she believes this moment more than she believes the others. With the time they've spent together, moments at Fosters, she feels like he means this and her past experience in reading him makes her think she's right in that thought. And maybe he meant this right now, but she'd been sitting here a while and had been doing some thinking. She had thought about him before this though and already knew that she can't give him another chance, not right now. She can't risk getting her heart broken again at the moment because she's not sure she'd survive it. So, she tells him what she knows she needs to do now, "But I honestly can't handle any more stress in my life right now. (He gets it here, that though she seems to believe him- by some miracle- she's rejecting him.) I'm going to do this on my own. I know you don't understand it, but please respect it." She gets up and hurries away from him then because she's already started crying again thanks to the look on his face (like maybe this time, she was the one breaking his heart).

Puck leans back against the wall, more than a little stunned at what just happened. She didn't have anyone else to pick (no parents, no Finn), and she still didn't pick him. She seemed to believe he was sincere in what he told her about wanting both of them, but she didn't want to be with him now. He doesn't understand where he went wrong this time. He could usually pick the point where he got stupid and lost her- or knew it going in like last time- but this time, he didn't understand why she didn't want him to be there for her at the very least.

Puck's known he's a screw up his whole life. Pretty much since the third time he tried to help his mom with dinner when he was five and he somehow ended up managing to get the entire meal onto the floor by catching the table cloth and pulling it along without knowing. But he's not a careless kid anymore, he can't be now that he has one of his own on the way, so he can't screw things up so much anymore. He has to be better and he thinks that that needs to start by proving to Quinn that despite her decision to go it alone, he's not going to stop wanting her, wanting them, and he's not going to stop trying to prove to her that he's a better man than he's made her and everyone else think he is. He's got to make a lot of changes to his life, starting now.

(Here's something you should know: Like anyone else, Puck makes a lot of empty promises to himself about things he'll do, things he'll change. But he'll do this one. He's really not going to give up on making something work with Quinn- in at least making sure he's there for her through everything. And he's going to remain steadfastly determined even though everything is going to be a lot harder than he thinks it will be.)

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**A/N: I hope you enjoyed reading the chapter!**

We're **AU** from the canon of episodes past this point on. At this point you've spent quite a while reading here so if you want/need further explanation of how things are going to progress from here (with it being AU, what type of canon will be mixed in, and so on), please visit my profile.

**Next chapter title:** _These are feelings too hard to measure_ from "Common Ground" by Neil Diamond. I know, a lot of the titles at this point have come from Neil, which is odd as I'm not an especially big Neil Diamond fan, but he just seems to fit Quick.

**Thank you for reading and remember that reviews equal love so please leave one!**


	10. Chapter 8

**A/N: First, as always, thank you to the super fantastic people that reviewed the massive last chapter! **

Second, this chapter was supposed to be titled "These are feelings to hard to measure" and it was supposed to cover a whole lot more than this. Then I was one hundred and fifty pages into the next chapter, still not to the event that I wanted to end on, and I realized I can't just split it into parts for posting, I needed to make it into separate chapters. I think it feels like it's moving a little slower that way and it's kind of less complete, but it's much easier to digest than over one hundred and fifty pages at once if I split into about four chapters (or at least that's what I'm thinking at the moment- with this being the shortest, the next being longer, the one after that being slightly longer than this one, and the very last being twice as long as this update). This rearranging of how things are going to be posted (and therefore extension of how many chapters the story is going to be total) means that for once I'm actually ahead as I already have the next two updates written (yay!). Let's hope things can stay that way.

Third, did everyone get a chance to finish the last chapter? It got almost as many hits as chapters do on average, but far less reviews so I was worried that, given it's extreme length, you lovely readers were having to go back to it, reading it in bits and I worried that many of you possibly never finished. Sorry if the length made reading the chapter difficult. As this update demonstrates since I'm breaking it up the larger part it was intended to be a part of, I am making an effort to make chapters less massively time consuming to read.

Fourth, in the next chapter I'll be having Will assign duets as the first post- Sectionals assignment for the glee club (which will be performed two chapters from now) and given the topic of the next episode I'd like to say that I think it was totally my idea first. I planned this bit out last December and I have the notes on everyone's song selection to prove it so I'm pretty sure I beat Ryan Murphy to the fairly obvious idea.

Fifth, all places mentioned (with the exception of Foster's, naturally) are actually in Lima, Ohio. I did massive amounts of research. Though I did take some creative liberties with places google earth wouldn't let me look at.

**Finally, I hope you enjoy reading the chapter and enjoy the AU direction:D

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**Cheated Hearts

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_**VIII. Some say losin' it all can bring something new**_

(Here's something you should know: Despite her decision to do things alone now, Quinn's still just as confused as ever.)

Quinn had walked away from Puck as briskly as her feet would carry her without breaking into a run. She tries to calm down and stop the tears running down her cheeks before she passes someone in the halls- even if that's not likely given that it's about forty minutes after school got out on a Friday.

She keeps walking even after her tears have stopped. (And tells herself firmly not to think about what just happened with Puck, what she just told him._ It was for the best._) She gets a distraction from the thoughts she's trying not to have in her head pretty quickly as it occurs to her that she doesn't know where she's walking to. She doesn't know where she's going at all. She doesn't actually have anywhere to go to. She doesn't have a home anymore, she doesn't have a place to spend the night anymore.

She takes a deep breath and tries not to dwell on how sad those thoughts make her feel. She's in control of her life now; she decided that as she sat in that alcove thinking of what she had become. So, she's in control. But what should she do?

As she had told Finn when she initially became homeless, she could probably get Brittany to let her spend the night at her house- though she's showing a bit now so parents are probably going to be more wary of her, she thinks. But what would she do the night after that? She couldn't depend on other people, other teenagers, for short stays at different homes. She need a permanent solution. One wasn't going to come before the night did, she was smart enough to know that the situation was more difficult than that. So, what could she do tonight? She had a little money, maybe she could get a hotel room. Although, thinking of how much she had, how much places cost, and the fact that she'd need to eat at least once at some point, she knew she was probably lucky to have enough for a night at the seediest motel in town. So how could she add to the money she has? She knows she could ask Puck, but though he'd help her she knew he probably couldn't actually afford to.

She stays stuck for a few minutes, unable to think of other people she could depend on to help her. (She doesn't want help. She does want to get through this on her own. First, because she feels like she needs to prove that she can- she's had so many blemishes to her character lately. Second, she feels like she deserves to be alone after everything she'd done.) The kids from glee probably hate her now because she's responsible for Finn leaving them. Plus she hadn't been that great to them to begin with. The idea of having to face Mr. Schue again made her want to run and hide. Addie- she wished she had a number for her and knew whether or not she was in town. She'd been in a sort of similar situation herself and she had always been so kind so Quinn thinks she would help, if only she could find a way to reach her.

There was always her sister too- maybe. Quinn hadn't really talked to Jessica in months- not since she found out she was pregnant. She never mentioned Puck to her and barely mentioned Finn. Her parents could have turned her sister against her possibly, but Quinn didn't think it was likely. If they told Jess she was pregnant she would have called her immediately or even shown up at the high school (somewhere she knew she would find her). If she told her sister now, she could probably send her the money for a hotel room. Maybe she'd even come and stay a few days and help her sort things out. Maybe she could even leave Lima and go stay with Jess and her husband in Reading, Pennsylvania- it's not like she really has anything to stay here for (a guy who kept breaking her heart, a school full of people who will ridicule her more now, a home she's not welcome in). Talking to Jess had been different the last few times she had done it and she wasn't looking forward to having to tell another person she cares about what she's done, that she's pregnant, but her sister had never been like their parents so it should go okay. Talking to her could be really helpful (she thinks- if she were positive of that she would have done it sooner).

Quinn heads for her locker to get her cell phone so she can call her sister. Unfortunately for her, apparently her parents finally caught on to the fact that they were still paying for it and picked today to cancel her service (it was just working a few hours ago too- damn their timing). There has to be a payphone somewhere around the school though…probably, she thinks so she grabs her bag and tries to think of where to head to first to look for the now uncommon object.

Before Quinn gets two steps from her locker (heading toward the gym thinking a phone may be in there), she hears a familiar voice call, "Quinn! Good, I found you again."

Rachel comes speeding in front of her blocking the direction she intended on head in. She rants, "I know you wanted to be left alone, but I spaced before and forgot to mention that I'm not only sorry for telling Finn, but sorry for making up the T-sacks- which, yes, was made up- so I could find out if Puck really was the father. It was awful of me to use your love and concern for your child against you. I'm sorry." She barely pauses long enough to take a breath before she's rambling again, "And I know I can't make up for it exactly, but I'd like to try by offering to take you in for as long as you need. I know you were staying with Finn and what I did made you homeless again, so I want to fix it by offering my home. I've told my dads about you, they'll be fine with it, don't worry. You can even partake in my pre-competition ritual with me tonight- it consists of a strict diet, several hours of practice, and being in bed by eight-thirty."

"If you really told your dads about me, then I doubt that they'd be fine with it," Quinn responds. She knows that it is nice of Rachel to offer- even if she's doing it out of guilt. But it's not what she needs or wants right now so she tries to find holes in the logic.

"Oh they won't care that you're pregnant. They don't judge," Rachel responds, thinking that was the reason Quinn believed her dads would object to her presence.

That would normally be the reason Quinn would believe she was unwelcome somewhere, after all it was why her parents threw her out, but this time she thought they'd object for a different reason. "I meant if you told them about me- how I used to…harass you through your Myspace page and how…cruel I could be to you at school. If I was in their position, I wouldn't want me in their home."

"Oh," Rachel stumbles eventually. "I never told them about any of that," she confesses, "I don't tell them when any of the kids at school do something mean. I don't want them to worry about me." She manages a smile and offers, "As far as they know you're the girl who's boyfriend I liked and who he was having a baby with- but we can gloss over those changes. Other than that they know that we're in glee together and though I think you have a lovely voice you're lack my range and training so you don't offer competition for some of the more demanding vocal performances that I would like the club to feature exclusively." She seems to realizes she side-tracked into a mini-rant and concludes, "They'll be fine, I promise."

"You promise what?" Kurt asks as he pops up suddenly beside the two of you.

"That my dads will be pleased to have Quinn stay with us," Rachel says hopefully. Quinn begins to think that she's being genuinely nice here and acting out of more than just guilt.

"She's not staying with you, she's staying with me," Kurt informs Rachel. He turns to Quinn and explains, "I may have helped plant the idea of being honest with your parents in Finn's head, which I've felt awful about- I had no idea what would happen. But I'm part of the reason you don't have anywhere to stay so I'd like to offer you one." He glances back at Rachel and offers, "It'll be better than Rachel's. We have a spare room-"

"We do too," Rachel interjects.

"-it's got a fantastic French countryside decorative theme to it," Kurt continues.

"Ours is very artistic. My dads painted it themselves," Rachel interrupts again.

"It's got it's own bathroom, a TV with cable, and we have Wi-Fi," Kurt adds on.

"Ours too," Rachel declares.

"And I cook and so does my dad. We'll have something fabulous every night," Kurt promises and looks to Rachel, challenging her.

"We mostly order take-out," she confesses, "but from the best places. Our taste in take-out is really…the best."

Before Kurt can come up with any other thing to promise and for Rachel to counter him again, Quinn interrupts finally, "Look, this is nice of both of you, but I can't accept. It's my fault I've lost two homes, not yours."

"But where will you stay?" Rachel asks. She doesn't look relieved that Quinn turned her down, she looks concerned, which is nice of her (again).

"I was just about to call my sister," Quinn tells them. (She hopes her sister will help or she'll probably have to take back what she's saying here and take one of them up on their offer to help.)

"Oh, I didn't even know you had a sister," Kurt comments and Rachel nods agreeing.

"She doesn't live in town anymore. But she'll come and help me figure something out- a more permanent solution than staying in people's spare rooms," Quinn tells them. She stays vague on where her sister is and hopes that they don't ask so she won't have to come up with a lie. If she tells them she's eight and a half hours away she knows they probably won't let this go. "Thank you for offering though," she tells them sincerely. She really didn't think anyone would be that nice to her after what just happened.

"I hope things work out with your sister, but the offer stands," Kurt says.

"Ditto," Rachel agrees. "I guess we'll see you tomorrow then. Both of you remember to rehearse for at least two hours tonight and one hour tomorrow before meeting for the bus at ten," she dictates and follows it with a "good-night" before marching back down the hall.

"I'm so not doing that," Kurt mutters as Rachel leaves. After Rachel is out of sight he turns in the opposite direction and heads off with a simple, "Toodles Q."

Quinn's left to finally continue on her way to they gym to look for a pay phone. Only, she finds out minutes later, there isn't one there. Back in one of the main hallway, she looks around trying to think of the next most likely place to have one. The office is closed by now, she knows that so there's no point going in there. As she's considering a place to go she finds a person walking towards her that she didn't expect to see again.

"Good, you're still here. I've been trying to call you since you walked-off," Puck tells her as he approaches.

"My parents finally canceled my phone," she explains.

"Oh, well," he hesitates and then, finally only a couple steps away from her he stops and dives in, "I realized that you're out of a place to stay again. I know you're doing this alone, but if you need a place to stay now or any time, you always have one at my place."

"Thank you," Quinn says sincerely. She thought she could depend on him and she's glad she's right. But what she needs to do here isn't changed by his offer so she can't accept. "I don't need a place actually. I was going to call my sister- as soon as I find a way to call her. Do you know where any payphones are around here?"

"No," he says after considering it. He pulls out his phone and offers, "But here. Go ahead and call her."

She bites her lip because it's another nice thing happening that she didn't expect and wants to accept, but she can't. "It's a long distance call, she's in Pennsylvania, and I can't let that get charged to you. It'd be too expensive."

He nods understanding. His money has better places to go after all, it probably would be better to avoid spending it on things he doesn't have to. But something stuck out to him what she said. "Pennsylvania?" he questions. "Does that mean you're going out there?" he asks, afraid to hear the answer but wanting it all the same.

_Maybe_, is the honest answer. But this is his baby too and with the way he's looking at her right now, like her leaving would be the worst possible thing that could happen to him, she can't say it. She's definitely staying through tomorrow though, through sectionals, and then thinking about things so she tells him as if he has asked about her plans for the very immediate future, "No." She explains (and lies a bit), "She knows some of the stuff going on- not the most recent developments of course, but once she does she'll come out here. She should make it by tonight if I could find a phone soon. And if she can't make it by tonight she'll send me some money to get a hotel room for us for the rest of the weekend, come tomorrow, and she'll help me work something out- a more permanent place to stay."

"Good. That sounds…good," he responds awkwardly. It'd been only about thirty minutes since she declared she would be going it alone and she already had a plan- and a better one than he could have come up with. Maybe she really didn't need him. (He knew though, he still wanted her to want him.) He remembers the things she said, thinks about what both paths could mean, and offers, "Well if she can't come today I can take you by Finn's to get your things then take you wherever she gets you a room. And if she's not here before we need to meet at the bus in the morning I can swing by and give you a ride here."

If her sister couldn't come immediately (and she knew that immediately would get her here very late tonight), she hadn't honestly thought how she'd get her things from Finn's or how she'd get back here tomorrow. She supposed a cab though she hated to waste the money on one. So she decides, "Mrs. Hudson has work at six tonight. I figured Finn would have my things waiting for me outside shortly after that so he doesn't have to see me. It probably isn't a good idea to leave them out on his doorstep or front yard too long and my sister, if she makes it tonight, may not make it soon enough so I may have to take you up on that. I'll let you know, about both of them."

He nods. It's not like he can force her to accept his help even if he wants her to let him help. There's still one thing he knows she needs at the moment though and since he's not giving up on being there for her, he thinks about it and suggests, "While I was looking for you I saw Ms. Pillsbury still in her office. If she's still here I'm sure she'd let you borrow her phone to call your sister."

"I'll go look for her. That's a good idea, thank you," Quinn tells him- genuinely grateful because finding a payphone on campus was seeming more hopeless and the more time that passed the less likely it was feeling like she'd ever get to talk to her sister.

He nods again. (It feels like this is all he's really doing even though he knows he is doing something for her here. So why doesn't it feel like progress?) He asks, "If you want, I can hang around here until you've made your call and give you a ride wherever after?"

Again, it is a nice offer. Nice didn't feel right to her right now though. And besides if she goes off with Puck, spends time with him after today (a horrible day) and ends up believing in him, wanting him, as she's already starting to here with him looking at her like that (and just being near), then she'd probably only end up getting her heart broken again, repeating past mistakes, and she had just vowed not to let those things happen again. She tells him (honestly- she had already thought of this when she realized she'd have a wait for her sister), "I was actually just going to go to the library while I wait for my sister or to get my things. I have a project due next Tuesday and I could really use a distraction from today for a little while anyway. It's a short walk, I'll be fine getting there. But thank you."

"Alright," he says, accepting her choice. He has something else to say here, but he hesitates. Not because it's a very difficult thing to say, but he knows waiting a beat could open up an opportunity.

She starts to take a couple steps backwards toward the direction she'll be turning and heading in in a second, right after she says, "I'll see you tomorrow."

As soon as she begins to turn he takes a step forward and catches her forearm- holds it lightly between his fingertips.

(Her breath hitches a little- enough that she notices it, not so much that he could.)

She turns back to him and he lets her arm slide from his slight grasp as he tells her, "I have to tell my mom tonight. Word's going to spread and I need her to hear it from me."

She tries not to think of all the things he's saying by saying this (and all the ways he compares to Finn about this situation). Instead she nods and tells him, "I know."

"She's probably going to want to meet you," he warns. She's going it alone she said, so he doesn't know if he'll be able to tell his mom that of course the girl who's pregnant with his kid will meet her (if that's what his mom wants- which he's pretty sure it will be).

Right. Puck's mom wasn't like hers-she'd probably want to at least meet the girl who's having her granddaughter (and she hopes that the woman doesn't judge her for that). But it feels…like too much, for right now at least. She has enough stuff to deal with, to figure out, and she just can't imagine going through that any time in the immediate future. She tells Puck, "If she wants to meet me of course I'll do it. But, can you maybe ask her for some time? I just don't feel up to it right now."

"Yeah, sure," Puck responds, understanding. It'd been a long day and it wasn't even over. Plus he knew Quinn had been through a lot lately (some of it thanks to him) and even if meeting his mom probably wouldn't go badly really, she probably didn't need another difficult situation to go through at the moment. "Call me if you need anything," he tells her again and lets her go her direction while he heads another.

She forces away thoughts of their interaction and heads for Ms. Pillsbury's office. She is indeed still there. It looks like she's just staring at her hands as they're flat on her desk in front of her. "Ms. Pillsbury?" Quinn says tentatively from the doorway.

"Quinn, come in, what can I do for you?" she knows the contents of the day already and she couldn't begin to guess what would come next so she simply asked the standard question of those that enter her office.

"Most people already knew, I don't know if you're one of them, but I was staying with Finn because my parents kicked me out. After today-" Ms. Pillsbury nods, she was there, so Quinn skips over any further detail, it's not necessary, "I need to arrange another place to stay and to do so I wanted to call my sister but my parents finally canceled my cell service."

"Use my phone," Ms. Pillsbury jumps in as she turns the phone around for it to be easier to reach from the other side of her desk.

This is what she was hoping for, a phone. But Quinn had been looking for a payphone (and had made sure she had plenty of change for it) because she lied when she told Puck her sister was informed on things- this conversation would probably take a while. She warns Ms. Pillsbury so she can retract the offer if she needs her office and/or phone, "I haven't told my sister much lately. I have some explaining to do. It's probably going to take me a while so if you need your phone, if you could just direct me to a payphone-"

"No, take all the time you need," Ms. Pillsbury insists. She stands up as she continues, "I need to check in with Mr. Schue anyway- see if he's found you guys a twelfth member for tomorrow and go over a few other specifics. I'll be back in a little while to check and see how things are going and if you need anything." She smiles reassuringly as she leaves and shuts the door gently behind her.

She has a phone, privacy, and time, so Quinn no longer has a reason not to call her sister (except the continued fear that she may not actually be able to count on her). She dials the number from memory and takes a deep breath as she listens to it ring.

"Hello?" comes her sister's voice after the third ring.

"Jess, it's-"

"Quinn!" her sister exclaims and continues quickly, "Should you be calling me yet?"

Huh? "What do you mean?" Quinn returns, greatly confused.

"You haven't called in forever so I called the house- about two weeks ago- and mom and dad said you were in the middle of those tests you take to get college credit. They said they'd last like a month and that I shouldn't bother you until they were finished," Jessica explains.

"AP tests aren't until spring," Quinn says- the first wrong thing to correct in what she was just told.

"Oh," Jessica says, "if I was a better student in high school I probably would have known that." Her parents lying to her wasn't unusual, but this case was odd. She asks, hoping Quinn knows, "Why would mom and dad tell me that then?"

Okay, this is it. No more hesitating. She needs her sister to know if she's going to get some help and she really needs help. Quinn forces out, "Because they couldn't let you talk to me at home because I'm not at home. They kicked me out a few weeks ago."

"Why?" her sister manages to squeeze in asking during Quinn's pause.

She's said this before, it shouldn't be hard to do again. (It is though. Because right now she's telling someone she cares about- someone she's letting down.) "I'm…pregnant," she confesses evenly.

"What?" Jessica returns thinking that she must have an awful connection and couldn't have heard right.

"I'm pregnant," Quinn repeats, softer (shame entering her tone).

"Oh," Jessica responds, not knowing what else to say. Saying one of the thoughts in her head, Jessica comments, "I didn't even think it sounded like you really liked your boyfriend that much."

"It's not his," Quinn says because she might as well tell her sister everything, she'd need to eventually anyway.

Jessica stays silent for fear of saying something stupid in her state of shock. Okay, her little sister, her teenaged sister, is pregnant and apparently kicked out of their parents house. Wait, then, "First, I can't believe mom and dad kicked you out. Well, I can believe it it's just…anyway, where have you been staying since they did?"

"At Finn's," Quinn says and knows that her sister must be confused. She tries to explain simply for now, "It's a long story but until earlier today he thought the baby was his."

That was certainly going to need more explaining, but concentrating on the words Jessica picks up, "So now you're going to need somewhere else to stay?"

"Yeah," Quinn confirms. She proposes, "I know I have a lot of explaining to do and I want to tell you everything, but I was hoping maybe I could do it in person. Do you think you could come here and help me sort things out this weekend? And then maybe consider going back with you by Monday? I'd leave here sooner but I have this glee competition thing tomorrow and I really need to show up to it."

Jessica sighs heavily over the phone and says, "We really need to talk more often and share more when we do." Quinn's brows furrow in confusion but before she ask her sister what she meant Jess was continuing, "First, of course I would come immediately, but I'm kind of unable to walk at the moment."

"What happened?" Quinn interjects worriedly immediately.

"Oh it was so stupid," her sister says in a sigh, "I was at Macy's, a little over two weeks ago, and I was rushing down the escalator and I slipped and slid down to the bottom. I landed funny or something- broke my left leg in four places. I had to have surgery on it and I'm all laid up in this cast I can't move in. In another three weeks they're going to check on it and if it's not healing right they said they'll have to do surgery again and I'll be going through this all over again. It's awful. I can't really get around on crutches even and I definitely can't fit in either of our cars. Eric had to get one of his friends who's wife has a mini-van to drive us home from the hospital."

"Why didn't you call and let me know what happened?" Quinn asks and she gets the irony- she hadn't exactly been forthcoming about what had been going on with her either.

"I thought you were you know, living at home, and I didn't want mom and dad finding out- I don't want them to have a reason to visit. Though apparently I'll probably be laid up through the holidays so I'm either going to have to tell them or come up with one hell of an excuse," Jess responds. That settles how she can't go and see Quinn now like her sister wanted, but she needs to settle the other question too.

"I have something else to confess that might alter what you do next," Jess adds on. She sighs and admits, "Eric and I are having money troubles. Serious money troubles. Dad gave us that money as a wedding present and we decided to invest it in buying more stores, which as far as everyone knows was a really good idea. They're all part of a franchise though and when business has been dropping from bad to worse over the last three years- the franchise is costing us more money than the stores are making. It's been sucking our bank accounts dry. We've put all but one of the stores up for sale and I was at Macy's that day I fell, rushing, because I was trying to make it to a job interview."

"I'm so sorry. I had no idea things were that bad," Quinn says, not really knowing what to say but feeling bad for her sister and like she should say something.

"We didn't want anyone to know how bad things have gotten," Jess replies. She confesses, "I've been looking for a job to help support us for over a year because things have been…we're lucky we put away some savings when things were going good, if not, we would have lost the house by now." She sighs and gets to the part she really wishes she didn't have to say, "Quinn, you said about coming to live with us and of course you're welcome to, but I can't promise that we could afford to support you or the baby. I wish we could, but realistically I don't see us being able to. If you come we'll make it work of course. You'd just have to get a job too and after I get a first job I could take on a second. We may have to sell the house and move somewhere cheaper- our mortgage is a little outrageous- but we'll make it work. So when you're considering what you want to do, keep in mind that things won't be better here, just different." She exhales harshly into the phone and adds, "And I really hate to say this, but if you don't come stay with us, Eric and I will still help you as much as we possibly can, but…if we could avoid letting mom and dad know that we are that could be really helpful. Eric and I are nearing the point where we may need to ask them for help, for a loan, and I have a feeling they wouldn't give it if they knew we'd give some of it to you so, not that it sounds like you'll be seeing them, but it'd be best if they didn't find out that we're picking your side."

"Oh," Quinn responds slowly, not quite sure what to make of everything. It was a lot of information to take in at once (a feeling she knew her sister would be having/was having given everything she told and would be telling her).

"I'm so sorry," Jess apologizes immediately, "it's so awful of me to say that, I know. I should refuse any contact with them from now on for what they did to you. Throwing their own daughter out of their house and while she's pregnant no less- it's awful. But there's interest on bank loans and we probably wouldn't qualify for one at this point so we may need the help. I'd make sure you'd benefit from their help too of course- not that makes it any better of me to ask this of you."

Quinn believed her sister. She believed that she felt bad for having to tell her everything that she did. But she did need to know the circumstances before she made any sort of decision and the fact that it sounded like things would feel just as impossible if she moved in with her sister was something she needed to know. Her sister's house wasn't going to be the convenient safe haven she was hoping it would be. "It's fine. I understand," she tells her sister, assures her, because she really does understand that they're desperate too and unfortunately for the situation her parents could be their solution (even if they're the ones who made her situation more difficult).

"I'm sorry," Jess apologizes again, because she feels awful that things are the way they are and that she can't do more. She's not a bad sister though, despite her mistakes and circumstance. She offers, "You need some place to stay tonight though. Eric's actually in the area. We finally got someone interested in some of the stores. He was showing the one in Cincinnati yesterday and he showed the one in Dayton today. He'll be heading your direction because his cousin just got a job as a professor at the university in Findlay. I'll have him stop by and see you since I can't. I have my laptop here, just a second, I'll look up who has rooms free for the next couple of weeks- the Fairfield Inn or the Country Inn- and I'll call him and tell him where to get you a room."

"No," Quinn declines, "those are the two most expensive hotels in Lima. I can't let you pay for a room at either of them for a couple of weeks. The Travelodge or the Days Inn will be fine- for a week, I'll figure out something else by this time next week."

"You are not staying at the Days Inn- you might as well stay at the Red Carpet Inn- both of them are so…disgusting," Jess says with a shudder. Quinn can hear quick clicking of her sister typing and before she can argue that she's (fairly) sure the Days Inn would be fine, Jess continues, "Here. I'll have Eric get you a room at the Wingate. It's not much more than the places you proposed and it's in a better location. It's closer to your school and it's in the middle of town so you won't have far to go to get something to eat. Plus there's free breakfast included so one of your meals each day included in the price."

Quinn knows where the hotel is. Lima isn't so big of a town and it's hard to miss a building as big as a hotel. She knows, from the look of it from the outside, it would be nicer and if it's cheaper than the ones her sister said about (and since her sister's got her insistent tone about her) she should just agree to it, "Okay. Thank you, that would be great."

"No problem," Jess says, "Now I'll call Eric and let him know what's going on and what he needs to do and I'll call you right back."

Quinn has to explain about her phone then and since she doesn't know Ms. Pillsbury's number they have to agree that Quinn will give Jess five minutes to get things squared away with her husband and Quinn will call her back. Jess wants a few more answers before Quinn can't commandeer someone's office any longer.

Quinn sits in her chair and stares at the walls for the five-minute wait. She doesn't want to think of anything. She knows that what her sister told her about her and her husband's financial situation changes so many of her possibilities. She knows that things are going to be harder than she thought they were (and she already knew they were going to be _so hard_).

Once the five minutes are up she dials her sister's number again and Jessica answers on the first ring.

Jessica doesn't check to make sure it's her sister calling before diving right into the details, "Okay, Eric will pick you up from the library. He should be there around six/ six-thirty depending on traffic. He said to start thinking of somewhere you want to go to dinner. Then, after dinner, he's going to take you to get a phone and we'll add you to our family plan- no arguing, I want a way to get in touch with you no matter where you are. Then he's going to take you to the Wingate and check into the room I'm booking for you through a week from Sunday. No arguing with that either- you may have said a week, but I'm getting you an extra weekend there so we have more time to figure out something better."

Quinn knows better than to argue with her sister's stubbornness and she's really grateful for the extra help anyway so she's not about to refuse it. "That sounds great. Thank you so much," Quinn says sincerely.

"No problem. This is what family is really for- even if mom and dad never made it seem that way," Jessica declares. She knows that they have limited time given where Quinn is though so she doesn't hesitate to dive right back into their conversation, "Now I know we don't have long because you're in some lady's office, but I need to know a few important things before I let you go. And you also have to promise that after Eric leaves you you'll call me and fill me in on the rest of the stuff that's been going on because it sounds like there's a hell of a lot that I don't know."

"I promise," Quinn swears. She's just glad her sister wants to know the details and doesn't seem to be judging her for the situation she's ended up in. It's a nice change to have a family member accept her. (She regrets now that she didn't tell her sister sooner. They'd had that stupid little argument last time they talked so she didn't want to chance it again. She wishes she had trusted her sister more.)

"Okay, then first things first. Are you okay? Are you getting medical care?" Jessica asks concerned. Of course how her perfect little sister ended up pregnant was the question she really wanted answered. But right now, with limited time to learn things, there were other things that were more important.

"Yes I've seen a doctor, had an ultrasound. Everything's fine," she tells her. Though after that fall the previous day maybe she should get checked out again. The websites told her not to worry, but she was worried anyway.

"Good," Jess states. "How far a long are you?" Jess asks. It's not _that_ important of a question at the moment, but other than it only the heavier questions seemed to be coming to mind.

"Just getting into my second trimester," Quinn answers. She knows the exact week she's in but she's not sure her sister knows what that would mean as much as the answer she gave. (Her sister's never been pregnant and they've never talked about whether or not she's wanted to be. She's been married a little over four years and if pregnancy is a sore spot Quinn doesn't want to accidentally rub it in.)

Wow. That meant her little sister was over three months pregnant. Possibly even showing now. The image of her little sister pregnant was having trouble processing in her mind. She just couldn't seem to wrap her head around all this and struggled to come up with a simple, important, answerable question for the moment.

Met with silence from the other end of the line, Quinn gets a little self-conscious. She doesn't know what her sister is thinking about, but she feels like it's important she know sooner rather than later about the circumstances of how she got pregnant (in the briefest sense for now at least). She blurts, "It was just once. And it wasn't some frivolous thing."

"Oh I know," Jessica assures. She felt bad that her sister thought she had to tell her that. Of course Quinn wouldn't just be sleeping around with anyone. She may not get to see her very often or even talk to her as much as she'd like and they may not have really grown up together since she was ten years older than her sister, but she did know her despite all that. She laughs a little and jokes, "I know you're not a girl that would do things like that. That girl was me in high school. I lost my virginity in the bed of Jason Ward's El Camino freshman year of high school. But I was in that phase where I just had to try everything mom and dad forbid me from doing. You're not like that though. You never have been. I know that however you ended up pregnant, it meant something to you. I know the guy meant something too. Right?"

Quinn's tearing up. She's glad her sister has so much faith in who she is and that she doesn't seem to think that whatever her actions were, they were wrong. "Yeah, he did," she admits in a tear-filled breath. (It's difficult to admit, after how everything went wrong- multiple times- that she cared for him.)

"Does he still?" Jessica can't help but ask even though she knows it's one of those heavier questions that should probably be left for later when they can talk as long as they want.

"I don't know. It's complicated," Quinn answers. It's a mostly honest answer. (Really, she knows everything lately with him wouldn't hurt so much and even their last conversation in the hallway wouldn't have been so awkward if she didn't still feel something for him. She's not so sure anymore though that that something really means anything.)

It sounded like she'd be in for a real story when they talk later, Jess thought. She sighs and decides, "Well honey, I guess I should let you go. We've occupied your guidance counselor's phone line too long probably."

"Yeah, I should let her have her office back," Quinn agrees. She doesn't want to let her sister go. She feels better talking to her, but at least she knows she'll be able to talk to her about anything any time she wants from now on. No more hiding or fear will get to her.

They say goodbye and Quinn hangs up the phone. She stands up, wipes at her eyes, and turns the phone back to how Ms. Pillsbury had it. As she's picking up her bag from the ground she hears the door open. She looks up to find Ms. Pillsbury standing in the doorway.

"How'd it go?" she asks adding on, "If you don't mind me asking."

"It went good," Quinn tells her. She doesn't want to be completely honest because she fears it would raise too much concern. So she tells the guidance counselor, "My sister broke her leg since the last time we talked actually so she can't make the trip here. But her husband should be here in a couple of hours and he's going to help me get some things sorted out- a temporary place to stay and help me work on a more permanent one."

"That sounds good," Ms. Pillsbury says optimistically. She heads further into her office, around to her side of her desk as she adds, "I can always help with anything too. I know you haven't taken me up on any of my proposed sessions- and that's fine- but you can come in here for anything, it doesn't just have to be for academic advising."

"I know. I just haven't felt up to it," Quinn explains. There are a lot of things she knows she needs to start working on/deciding though. She hadn't wanted to before, but now she really wants to take control of everything and start making progress on her life. So she tells Ms. Pillsbury, "But I'll probably be in this week. There are a lot of things I know I need to talk to you about, just concerning school even, and I'm going to get them sorted so I can be organized when I come in."

"Great," Ms. Pillsbury exclaims, feeling like progress has been made. "Well," she says and pauses as she grabs her bag, "I am finally done here, Mr. Schue found you guys a temporary replacement, so I'm heading out. Do you need a ride anywhere? Or anything else?"

"No, I'm fine. I'm just heading to the library- only a couple of blocks walk," Quinn assures as she adjusts the bag on her shoulder and heads for the door.

Ms. Pillsbury follows her out and bids her a good night and tells her she'll see her in the morning in the parking lot to get on the bus. They part ways in the hall. Quinn heads back to her locker and picks up more of the things she thinks she may need this weekend. All of her books make for a heavy load, but thankfully the library really wasn't far.

As she leaves school, Quinn realizes that everything seemed different than when she had arrived this morning. While she felt awful about how she had hurt Finn, she didn't feel bad about all the changes. She hadn't really made any progress in sorting out her life exactly, but at least she felt like she could now. She finally felt like she had control of her life again and it was a good feeling.

-o-o-o-

Quinn finishes her weekend homework within an hour of arriving at the library. It had been a long day and very emotionally taxing day so she didn't want to get into any of the hard decisions she knew she had before her. She wanted to make progress on them, figure out what she was going to do with her life, but right now she really needed a break from that stress. So she browses the books and settles on _The Secret Garden_ because it was a childhood favorite, it was familiar, and she needed the happy ending right now.

It's while one of those magical moments is occurring in the book that she hears a questioning, "Quinn?" She puts down the book to find her brother-in-law standing across her table from her (she picked one toward the front of the library so he would find her easily). She didn't really know him very well. Her sister had met him while they were in college at Northwestern and then they got married and moved to Pennsylvania as soon as they graduated. She didn't see her sister much besides some holidays after that so she didn't see Eric much. She figured that spending time with him tonight would therefore probably be awkward- especially considering the circumstances.

When she looks up at him he continues, "This seems to be a pretty nice library. Are you sure it's a safe place to be though? Some homeless guy barked at me on my way in."

"That's just Patches. He's harmless," she tells him as she stands and gathers her things.

"Okay," he accepts.

(He doesn't glance at her stomach and try to see if she's showing- which in this dress she's not really- and she's grateful for that.)

He picks up some of her books to carry them for her and he checks with her whether she has anything in the stack she still needs to check out. She doesn't so she heads for the exit. He stops her before she's gotten two steps past him in the direction of the entrance, "Barking at that guy back doesn't make him…not-harmless, right? Because if that's the wrong thing to do with him then we need to find another exit."

Quinn smiles, "I don't think it'll be a problem." She can't help laughing a little as she asks, "You barked at him back?"

He shrugs and answers, "It felt like the right thing to do."

They head out to his car (there's not a problem with Patches) and he apologizes for all the mess in it- he'd been driving a lot for the last couple of days and had kind of let things go.

It's then, after he asks where she wants to go, that she has to mention about getting her things. He doesn't ask questions, just says to give him directions to get there and they'll get her things. When they get to Finn's her things are piled on/around his stoop just like she expected (they're packed away nicely too, which she appreciates). Eric jumps out of the car telling her he'd get them and she should just stay there before she can argue.

Once back in the car, he pulls away from the house and drives down the street even though he doesn't know where he's going (it didn't seem like a place she'd want to be from the little he'd gathered from his wife).

After a few minutes of driving without direction in silence, Eric asks, "Okay, so, according to Jess especially, I'm not good at reading women. Are we acknowledging and possibly discussing the whole…pregnancy thing or are we pretending it doesn't exist for tonight? Because I'm good either way- whatever you want or need to do, I'll go along with it, no problem."

Quinn knew her sister would pick a good guy to marry, but she had never had any particular experience to go on with him that she was assuming that on, just belief in her sister. But now, she knew he was indeed a great guy. It had been a long time now (or at least felt like it) since she pretended that she wasn't pregnant, had mostly gotten used to the idea that she was. Plus, when she had the option not to for whatever reason, Quinn didn't particularly like to pretend. So she quips good-naturedly, "Well I think pretending I'm not pregnant would be impossible to do once you see how much I can eat now." (It wasn't that much- except when compared to how much she'd eat on her constant dieting.)

From there they discuss where to go to dinner, but Quinn doesn't have any suggestions. Her parents were never big on eating out at anything but the nicest restaurants in town or their country club and she didn't want to go any of those places (they were too expensive anyway). They couldn't go to the Olive Garden considering Finn worked there. And when she went out with girls from the Cheerios or dates before/with Finn they usually ended up at any pizza place or the restaurants in the mall, which she also didn't relish going to (she figured they'd be packed with kids from school). Foster's was closed so it was out (Eric called 411 for the number when she mentioned it, but no one answered). Finally, Eric said he saw a Cracker Barrel on his way into town and asked her if she wanted to go there. Quinn had never eaten there, which Eric, for some reason, couldn't fathom (apparently it was a popular chain in his home state of Pennsylvania too). He declares that she has to experience the Cracker Barrel so that's exactly what they do.

There's silence as they pour over the menus. Eric was familiar with it, but Quinn had a lot of reading to do considering she could choose from ordering breakfast or something off the lunch/dinner menu. Thus silence prevailed between them prior to ordering.

Once their meals were ordered and there was no longer the convenient distraction of the menu, both Eric and Quinn were at a loss for where to begin. So Quinn's thankful when Eric offers, "Jess is really sorry she couldn't come."

"It's fine," Quinn assures. She wishes her sister could be there, she wishes she could see her, but she understands why it's impossible. "Was she in the hospital long after the surgery?"

"Just a couple of days," he answers. Something clicks in his head and he pulls out his phone, he takes a second with it before passing it across the table to Quinn as he tells her, "Here she is in the hospital bed. She hated that I was taking a picture, that's why she looks like that, not because she was in pain or anything, they doped her up good." Silence settles between them again as she hands back the phone (she didn't know what to say about the slightly blurry and bad picture of her sister so she just smiled and gave the phone back). Unfortunately, this silence is an awkward one.

Thinking that he probably didn't know what to say to her because of her situation, Quinn thinks it may make conversation easier if she finds out what he knows. She asks, "So what did Jessica tell you about…what's been going on with me?"

That seems like a question that requires a delicate response. Eric thinks for a second and responds, "She told me everything she knew- I think." That doesn't seem like a very clear answer and he feels uncomfortable saying it, but since it seems that Quinn wants to hear it, he elaborates, "She said you're a little over three months pregnant, the father isn't your boyfriend but is a guy who things are complicated with, your parents kicked you out, your boyfriend thought he was the father and found out that wasn't true today and that's why we picked up your things before coming here, and she mentioned being confused over you saying something about a glee club."

"That does cover what I had time to tell her," Quinn says. She responds to the confusion because it's easier than anything else, "The glee club thing was just that I joined the one at school towards the beginning of the year. Finn, my boyfriend, had joined and my parents thought it would be good if I did too- it's kind of a long story. But I like the club. It's probably been the only fun thing about…anything lately. And we have our first competition tomorrow."

"Good luck," Eric wishes sincerely. "That sounds like a fun club. My high school didn't have anything like that- I don't think."

There's another lull in the conversation and Eric decides to just offer, "Look, we haven't gotten to know each other that well over the years, but you can talk to me if you want. I have a sister and female cousins, I can be a useful in a conversational sense. But if you don't want to talk about any of it that's fine- I'll just dive into what's been on TV lately and what movies I've seen in the last year and we'll find something to discuss I'm sure."

Just like he had before in the car, he was making things easy for her. He was offering an easy way to give her whatever kind of night she wanted to have. The only problem was that Quinn wasn't sure if she wanted to talk about anything or if she definitely different. It felt odd to just start out saying something about what kind of horrible things have been going on in her life just because he'd asked right now. "Thank you," Quinn says sincerely, "I'm honestly not sure what I feel like doing at the moment though."

"Okay," Eric accepts and continues, "then we'll start with me." He smiles kindly and confides, "So you know about what Jess and I have been up against for a while and why I was around here? The guy I met who was interested in buying a couple of the stores seemed even more interested after I showed them to him. I don't want to jinx it, but I think he's going to buy them. And that will get the pressure off of us a bit so it would be pretty great if he did."

"That's great," Quinn comments.

"Yep," Eric agrees. He smiles again and continues, "And now I get to have dinner with you and after I'm going to see my cousin in Findlay so my day's just getting better."

Quinn smiles, grateful for his kindness. She asks, trying to make conversation, "Jess said that your cousin just got a job at the University of Findlay? What is he or she doing there?"

"She's teaching art history," Eric answers. He explains, "She's my favorite cousin. She has the life I always wanted. She went to five different universities across Europe to get her degrees and then she just worked her way around the continent and Asia and Australia and Africa and bits of South America. She's almost never in the country so I was really excited when she said she'd be somewhere sort of near by and for at least the rest of the school year because she took over some professor's contract who went on a sudden sabbatical."

"Why'd she come back finally?" Quinn asks curiously.

Eric shrugs and guesses, "I don't know. When I'd ask her on the phone she'd give me some vague answer about it being a good opportunity- but she had better opportunities in better places, I know that. So I'm really looking forward to getting up there to sleep on her couch and grill her about why she made the move to Ohio of all places." He thinks for a second and adds on, "My cousin, Kelly, is really great so I'm going to make sure I put her number in the phone we get you after dinner. If you ever need someone around here she'd help."

Calling a complete stranger for anything doesn't sound appealing, but she appreciates the thought so Quinn says, "That's a thoughtful suggestion. Thank you."

They talk a bit more about things that had been going on with Eric and Eric and Jessica lately. Their food arrives and they dig into their platters (Eric, roast beef; Quinn, fried chicken). After a bit of topically-light talking during dinner, Quinn offers apologetically (because he'd been great, but she didn't feel exactly like taking him up on his kind offer to talk), "I'm sorry. I do believe that I could talk to you, but it doesn't really feel right to tell you anything I haven't told Jess and there's so much I haven't told her right now."

"It's fine Quinn, don't worry about it. I understand," Eric assures. He continues joking, "I mean, I'd love to know something you haven't told Jess so I could lord it over her. But I do understand."

The rest of dinner and dessert (he insisted she indulge) passed pleasantly. Afterwards they headed to the nearest AT&T store (Eric and Jessica's cell service provider) and they got Quinn a phone- she insisted on one of the ones that was free with a two year contract. He headed to the nearest ATM after that and gave her more money than she wanted to accept. He also wrote her three blank checks and told her to use them any time she needs them and when she runs out they'd find a way to get her more money when she needs it- just call them with the amounts after she cashes something. Quinn tries to gracefully not accept them as well, but she's easily swayed into doing so because she knows she only has about fifty dollars in her wallet and no more money so she really could need this from them. Then Eric checked to see if there was anything else she needed, and since she didn't need anything he took her to the hotel.

As Eric checks in to the room his wife booked with Quinn by his side the hotel receptionist looked at him funny. When she leaves for a minute he whispers to Quinn, "I think she thinks I'm a pedophile."

"Sorry," Quinn apologizes, knowing that he's only getting looked at like that because she's with him and that they're only here because of her situation (and because she's not old enough to get a hotel room on her own).

"Don't worry about it," he returns, brushing it off, "I'm happy to be here. If it means you having a room, a safe place to stay for a while, then it's worth it."

She smiles at him gratefully.

He helps her bring her things up to her room and makes sure she's okay there. He asks, "Are you okay here? I can stay longer. I can get a room next door and stay the whole week if you want."

"No, it's fine. I'll be fine. I'm used to being on my own anyway," Quinn assures.

He nods in acceptance, leans forward and hugs her, and leaves promising to call soon and making her promise to call his wife ASAP.

Quinn takes a little while to settle into the room. She finds her clothes for tomorrow, her coat because it was getting cold out, and puts a few of her things away. She adds her sister's number to her phone (and Puck's- though she tries not to think of why even as she does it; unsure if she was doing it because it was his baby she was carrying and that made him important, or if he was just important). Then she settles on the king sized bed, back resting against pillows piled against the headboard, and calls her sister.

"Took you long enough to call me," Jessica answers, "Eric texted me your number over ten minutes ago after he had left you- with the instruction to call me immediately."

"Sorry Jess," Quinn says with a small smile, knowing her sister was just teasing.

"We have a lot to talk about and while you were at dinner with my husband I realized that could make this call really expensive," Jessica begins.

"The guy at the store said that me being on your family plan meant that we could talk an unlimited amount, no extra charge," Quinn interjects confused between what the guy at the store said and what her sister was saying.

Jessica sighs and admits, "Fine. That is true, but I wanted you to sign up for Skype like I just did so I could see you while we talk. It's free. And I haven't seen you since Easter at the beginning of last April- it feels like forever."

Telling her sister she was pregnant and discussing it with her was different from letting her sister see that she's pregnant. It felt…big, maybe too big after the day she's had. "No. I look awful," Quinn protests.

"I doubt that's possible," Jess returns. "_I _look awful, I've been laid up in bed for over two weeks." As Quinn twists her lip between her teeth trying to think of what to do, Jessica thinks she catches on to why there's silence on the other end of the line. "I doubt I'll be able to tell you're pregnant," Jessica offers, "I've had friends as tiny as you get pregnant and they take forever to start showing."

"I've gained weight," Quinn tells her.

"Pssht, I'll believe it when I see it," Jessica remarks. She encourages, "Come on, just download it. If you don't I'm going to have to call Eric and tell him to turn around and go back there to force you to do it." She assures again, "It'll be fine."

Quinn concedes, "Okay. Just give me a few minutes. If we're really going to be talking a while then I'm changing into my pajamas and it may take me a few minutes to get on to the hotel's wireless too."

"No problem, I'm on under my name so just call me when you're ready," Jessica tells her sister and hopes that Quinn calls her soon because she's had lots of questions rolling around in her head for hours now.

Quinn manages to change, download Skype, and find and call her sister using the video features within ten minutes. Jessica spends a few minutes defending her ragged appearance- blaming it all on not being able to manage being upright for more than a few brief minutes a day. She doesn't comment on Quinn's appearance- doesn't want to spook her away since it was an obvious concern.

After some small talk where Jessica asks questions about what Eric and Quinn did that night/talked about, Jessica dives into the harder stuff by simply saying, "Tell me everything."

Quinn takes a deep breath and does just that. She starts at the beginning, at Foster's. She tells her sister about Addie and Foster and Kelyn and Puck. She explains the babysitting and how the relationship between her and Puck evolved even though she remembered thinking that it was a bad idea to let it. She explains why she had been hinting to Finn that she'd go out with him previous to this time and why she said yes when he finally asked her. She explains how she saw Puck in the time in between setting a date with Finn and actually going on the date. She explains how she ended up going out with Finn after spending the week with Puck and how her relationship with Finn progressed from there, what it was like. She explains the night that she got pregnant (leaving out some details of course) and then she explains the day after. She explains how she came to have her boyfriend who she never had sex with think she was having his baby and how many mistakes she had made with everyone in her life from there. She explains what her parents said when they kicked her out. Finally, she explains what happened today and the decision she told Puck about.

She concludes simply with, "That's everything."

"That was a lot, but I don't think it was everything," Jess returns.

Quinn's brows furrow. Her sister's not asking for details about _that_ night, right?

Thankfully before Quinn assumes that and starts talking again, Jess elaborates, "You haven't really said anything about the baby. Do you have any ideas about what you're going to do yet?"

"I did," Quinn admits, "When it was Finn's I didn't have any choices- I had to give her up. I couldn't let a baby that's not his ruin his life. But now things are different. I don't have anything she'd need. I don't see how I could give her anything she'd need because I don't have anything. But I don't really have a definite decision anymore."

"She?" Jessica inquires because that bit of information was new despite the fact that they had been talking for hours.

"Yeah," Quinn confirms softly, tears starting to sting in her eyes, "it was supposed to be too soon to tell, but they said it's a girl, they seemed sure."

"How are you feeling?" Jessica asks concerned (her laptop may not have the biggest screen, but she can see the glint of water in her sister's eyes).

"Fine. The morning sickness finally tapered off a week or so ago," Quinn answers, thinking it was what her sister was asking.

"That's good, but I meant how are _you really_ doing with everything?" Jessica says with inflection in all the right places so her question didn't get lost in translation this time.

"I'm…" Quinn trails off her lip quivering and her eyes watering enough to spill tears now. Barely anyone had asked her that since this whole thing started and it was nice that someone cared enough to. And she can't pretend with her sister there staring at her so she answers honestly, "I'm so terrified. I don't know what I'm doing and I don't have any idea what I'm going to do and everything is coming too fast."

"Aw, honey," Jessica sighs, feeling tears sting her eyes thanks to watching her sister fall apart. "It'll all be fine," she assures, "you have me and you have Eric and we will help you. You'll see, we'll make sure that this is far from the worst thing to ever happen. Everything will be okay."

Quinn nods and tries to believe her sister. She certainly hopes she's right. But she's doing this alone now and what if she continues to make all the wrong decisions like it seems like she's been doing? What if everything just gets worse? (And if she has to give up this baby girl, the only thing that's been a constant in her life lately, her life can't possibly get better, can it?)

"Now dry off those tears and show me this weight you've gained so I can feel better about getting fat while I lie mostly immobile in this bed," Jessica says, trying to change the topic so her sister will forget about how hard everything's going to be for at least a little while longer.

Quinn laughs, thankful for the change in topic and reluctantly does what her sister asks. She thinks she'll look bigger thanks to the webcam but Jessica swears that if she's showing then she must have been far too skinny before. It's reassuring, as was the entire conversation and seeing her sister again even if it was just through a web cam. Quinn's so glad that she decided to ask for help from her sister, it was definitely one of the best things about her life lately and the assurance that she does have family who cares about her helps her fall into a peaceful slumber that night.

-o-o-o-

Puck's Friday night was one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of his life so far.

After he and Quinn parted ways in the school he went outside and sat in his truck. He moved it so it was on the street that Quinn would need to go down to get to the library from the school and he waited. He sat there until he finally saw her leave the school and head in the direction she said she'd be. He wasn't going to stalk her or anything, he just wanted to make sure…he wasn't quite certain what he was doing. He just knew he needed to see that she made it out of school okay, got her call made and proceeded in the plan she had just like she told him she would.

He drove home and spent the next couple of hours in his room thinking about what he was going to say. He hoped Finn hadn't told his mom yet and that Mrs. Hudson hadn't called his mom about it. When his mom finally gets home from work she gets started on dinner right away (and she doesn't seem any different than usual so he supposes she hadn't gotten any phone calls revealing the truth to her). Both Kelyn and his mom seem surprised that Puck was not only going to eat with them on a Friday night, but that he was also going to stay in. He tells them that the glee kids would be pissed at him if he went out and risked having a little too much fun to be useful tomorrow. They don't seem to really believe him, but Puck has bigger things to worry about.

As they sit at dinner though, Puck realizes he can't say anything for a while. He can't tell his mom when his sister is there to hear. How she gets told about everything is his mom's decision too so he's stuck sitting there, knowing he's got to tell his mom things she's not going to be happy about, and pretending everything is normal. He tries not to think about everything he's going to have to say and usually he was pretty successful at not thinking, just not tonight when he really needed it.

(It doesn't help his sister's and mom's suspicions about his strange behavior- being there in all on a Friday night and his distractedness- that he keeps checking his phone every other minute like he's waiting for something important.)

(He thought maybe she'd need him tonight after everything that today was.)

Finally the time comes. Kelyn's falling asleep on the couch around ten and their mom encourages her to just go to bed, which she gives into. With the door to Kelyn's room shut and a few minutes having passed so it doesn't seem like she's coming back out again, Puck knows that this is the moment he's been waiting for. But here he is, not taking advantage of it. Instead of saying what he needs to say he sits on the couch (where she once slept next to him and held his hand with a bag of frozen peas in the middle) and nervously jiggles his right leg- arms crossed across his chest and staring intently at the TV even though he wasn't watching it.

"Noah," his mother says without taking her eyes off the magazine she was flipping through, "you're going to wear a spot in the floor there." She puts the magazine down and stands up to put it in a rack near the TV. She looks at him (he put a hand on his leg to stop it from moving and wouldn't look at her)- something isn't right. "What's going on?" she asks him.

Well, she did ask and he really needed to tell her everything. His leg starts jiggling again nervously as he says, "Ma' I have to tell you something really important."

"Okay," she says.

"You should probably sit down," he advises because he remembers how he was standing when he found out and how it felt like the ground fell out from under him.

May does as her son asked of her and she sits on the couch next to him facing him. She doesn't think she's ever seen him look so serious or scared and it terrifies her.

"I-" Puck begins looking at his mother, but he can't say it and watch her face and see how disappointed she's going to be. He turns away, eyes on the old brown carpet beneath the coffee table in front of them and finishes, "I got a girl pregnant."

It's not exactly the last thing May ever expected her son to tell her. She knew he was sexually active so she feared that this conversation would come at some point, but she thought it would only ever be a worry, not a reality. She takes a deep breath because she thinks she stopped breathing there for a second. Then she squeezes her eyes shut and starts praying.

Hearing his mother's quiet muttering gets Puck to finally look at his mother. Her eyes are closed and he has no idea what she's doing- he expected sheer disappointment not…insanity? "What are you doing?" he questions.

"Praying that the next words out of your mouth aren't that the girl's that Santana," May says and continues with her prayer.

"You can stop. It's not her Ma," Puck tells her. She opens her eyes and looks right at him. (It is there- the disappointment, and hurt too. But there's also concern and that makes it a little better, though not easier to continue.)

May sighs and confesses, "I don't know where to start. I have so many questions."

"There's _a lot_ I have to tell you," Puck reveals.

"A lot?" May checks. Puck nods and she blows out a breath as she says, "Oh." The idea of what's happening here settles in the few beats of silence that follow and she finds herself crying. This wasn't supposed to happen. Her kids were supposed to have good lives. They were supposed to get to be happier than she was. Not that she was unhappy- her kids made her very happy. But she had so many obstacles to over come thanks to her ex-husband and they were supposed to have it easier. Now her son was having a baby as a teenager so having an easier life no longer seemed possible for him.

"Ma' I'm so sorry," Puck apologizes fiercely. "Please don't cry," he begs.

She wipes away her tears and tells him, "I know you're sorry. I know you didn't mean for this to happen." She takes a deep breath, wipes at her eyes again, tries to smile a little as she says, "I'm fine." Her son needs her now so it's not the time to dwell on how this will probably change his life for the worst; it's time to make sure she's there for him to try and make sure that that doesn't happen. She thinks quickly and decides, "Okay, you have more to tell me and I want to know everything. But I have a feeling that all this may tempt me to turn to my old ways and Dr. Goldman advised that I should deter those feelings with exercise- it's damn hard to drink while on the elliptical... and then there was something else about endorphins, I don't know, I don't remember. Anyway, it worked the other time I tried it so it'll work now. I'm going to go change into something I can get on there in and then you tell me everything while I'm on there. Okay?"

"Yeah," Puck agrees. He didn't really understand it, but last time his mom felt like drinking, last time something bad happened (they found out his dad moved again- didn't leave any signs of where he took off to this time), it seemed to help her to keep busy like that to work through her depression/anxiety. Puck hadn't pictured telling his mom everything while she was in her track pants and star of David t-shirt huffing on an elliptical, but at least she wasn't crying anymore.

Puck moves their coffee table and brings the elliptical (possibly the oldest one ever made- they got it cheap at a garage sale) out from its poor storage place behind the couch. His mom gets a glass a water and gets on it as she says, "Okay, first I assume the girl is having the baby otherwise there wouldn't be much more to talk about like you said."

"Yeah, she is," Puck confirms from his spot on the couch next to the elliptical.

"Okay," May accepts with a nod. She still doesn't know where to start, but she figures the other person involved in the situation is as good of a place as any. "Tell me about this girl," May says. (She knows it's unlikely that the girl will be Jewish so she tries to prepare herself not to look displeased about that.)

Puck doesn't know where to begin. He knows Quinn could come off sounding awful because he's got to say that she spent a night with him and she was Finn's girlfriend- all things that made her sound horrible and not how he wanted her to sound. "Do you remember that time I had someone stay over and I said she wasn't just some random girl and how I thought she may be around for a while?" he asks.

"And only hours later you said she wouldn't be around. Yeah, I remember that," May responds. She's wondered what happened there for months.

"It's that girl," Puck tells her, "the girl that spent the night that night is the one that's pregnant. Her name's Quinn."

"Like Kelyn's babysitter from… last spring?" May asks.

"Yeah, that's her," Puck responds.

May's brow furrows and she confesses to her son, "I'm confused. You lost me somewhere already."

He knew he'd mess this up, telling his mom. It was too complicated and he didn't want to say things wrong and have Quinn come off badly and that just seemed impossible. He sighs and tells his mom, "Okay, I can do this better, but some stuff I'm going to say is going to sound really bad about me and about her probably, but it's not like it seems so just don't… judge it yet. Just let me explain everything."

"Okay," May accepts.

"Quinn, who babysat Kel for free while I was working, is the girl that was here that night. We… had something right after we didn't need her to watch Kel anymore. But that something we had wasn't public so everyone thought we were both single and Finn asked her out and I didn't give her a reason not to go out with him so she did and we kind of ended before we really even began," Puck explains (he figured trying to explain how the two of them actually snuck around after Finn asked Quinn out was too complicated and not really necessary anyway- plus it made them both look worse). He sighs and continues with the even harder part, "Then there was that night and she was still with Finn, but she'd had a bad night and she called me and I knew it probably wasn't right, but I went to see her. I couldn't help it. We just talked for a while but somehow we ended up fighting and then I sort of implied how I regretted that I didn't give her a reason not to go out with Finn. I mean, I didn't say that, I should have, but she knew that for the whole four or so months since we had been almost together I missed her. And when we came back here I really didn't think that we'd, you know, because she's not that kind of girl. She was president of the chastity club at school. But, after, she was going to break up with Finn immediately and we were going to see each other secretly until he got over them and would be okay with me asking her out. Her parents are…assholes though. Somehow after she talked to them and they'd told her what she could do and couldn't do if she wanted to remain a part of their family she realized she couldn't break up with Finn like she thought and she couldn't ever really be with me for anyone to know we were together. And we fought and I said a lot of things I didn't mean, I think she did too, and we ended again. Because of how bad we ended, I guess she really just didn't want me around at all so she told Finn, who she'd never slept with, some ridiculous story and he believed the baby was his until today when he found out the truth. I tried to get her to trust me for a while, tried to make us a family, but then I realized that she didn't deserve to have the baby ruin her life. Because she was headed for some great college probably and she was going to be something important, you know? So I did some more things I regretted in a brief period of stupidity and made her think I was lying when I said I wanted her and the baby and so she'd give up the baby and get the life I know she wanted."

That was a lot of information to take in at once. Suddenly the exercising was doing nothing but making May more exhausted. She sighed, "Oy vey." She stopped moving and got off the elliptical as she said, "I've got to sit down." She sits next to Puck and takes a second to think things over. She's glad that the girl wasn't just some "hook-up," as the kids were saying. But she's not sure what to make of everything. Finn was like a brother to Puck and the fact that he did these things that would hurt him didn't make sense. Perhaps the girl meant more to Puck than Finn did, she thought, which was a really, really big deal. Puck seems to feel bad enough about everything (and Finn finding out today explains his bruises and black eye better than his excuse about football practice-which she was pretty sure already ended) so she doesn't want to dwell on that right this minute. Instead, thinking about some of the other things said, May asks, "Does Quinn know what she wants to do about the baby? Is she keeping it or giving it up? And I'd imagine she's a little over three months along now, right?"

"Yeah, she's just over three months," Puck confirms, not that he's quite sure (he should probably count the weeks from that night just so he knows exactly how pregnant she is). "When everyone else thought it was Finn's she was going to give the baby up. She had a couple arranged but I'm pretty sure that fell through. I don't know what she's going to do now. Earlier today after everything changed she said she needs to do this on her own and she asked me to respect that," he explains.

"And what are you going to do?" May asked in return. First, just because the girl was doing things on her own didn't mean that this wasn't still Puck's responsibility too. And second, by the tone in his voice as he said it she didn't think that this was going to be something Puck left alone.

Puck shrugs and offers, "I don't know. I don't know what we should do about the baby anymore. If we keep it or we give it up, neither option seems right, right now. I do want to be involved in everything, but I don't want to force my self into it. I want Quinn to want me to be involved. I want her to believe that I'm not as bad as I seem again. And I'm going to do whatever it takes to prove that to her."

"Good," May says, "that sounds like a good plan." She's glad Puck wants to take responsibility even if it sounds like he's screwed up so far and in a way that made him untrustworthy and not wanted. But back to the important issues still at hand that had yet to be mentioned, May asks, "Did Quinn tell her parents about the baby yet? Do they have an opinion about what should happen?"

"They found out, she didn't tell them. She was trying not to because they were serious that day we broke up when they told her that being a part of her family had conditions. They kicked her out as soon as they found out about the baby," Puck answers a bit bitterly because he still can't understand how anyone could do that and hates them for doing it to Quinn.

"What?" May exclaimed. She knew Puck said they were assholes, but her son said that about most people so she figured it wasn't right. Now though, she'd have to agree, they definitely sound like assholes. "Where has she been staying?" she asks concerned.

"With Finn," Puck explains, "Until today at least. I told her she could stay here-"

"Of course she can. Any time. You tell her that okay? She's welcome here any time," May interjects. Maybe this girl was just like the Santana girl that she never liked, but as far as May was concerned that didn't matter. It didn't matter what the girl was like, she was pregnant with her grandchild and that meant she always had a home in their home.

Puck nods and says, "I told her you'd say that, but she has a sister who's not like their parents and she doesn't live around here, but she said she needed to talk to her sister and she'd help her out. She's at a hotel somewhere with her now probably."

"That's good," May comments, "it sounds like having a supportive family member around is something she could really need right now." May tries to decide what else she feels like she needs to know now.

Puck notices how his mom pauses, sits there and thinks, and realizes one of the things she's probably wondering but doesn't want to come out and ask. He offers in answer to the unspoken question he knows is on her mind, "She's not Jewish. She's some kind of Christian. Always wears a cross."

That was expected. May tries to take it well and offers, "Well at least she has some kind of faith. In difficult times like these, that helps. You could benefit from coming to temple with me more often."

How did his mom always manage to just insert life suggestions like that when they weren't even talking about him? But Puck hadn't felt like having faith in anything had ever been particularly beneficial to him so he just shrugs in response. He changes the topic with something that will distract her, "Quinn found out that the baby's a girl."

"A girl?" May checks, a little thrown by the randomness of the comments. Puck nods and she lets it sink in. She could have a granddaughter by this time next year. Or at least a little girl will exist that will technically be her granddaughter by this time next year, that was a definite. "Oh," she says simply. Knowing the baby's gender did make it seem more real.

"What do you want to do about telling Kel?" Puck questions, because he hadn't come up with any way to explain it to her that made him feel even slightly okay about telling her at all.

May sighs and spends a minute thinking about the question before she answers, "I don't think she needs to know quite yet. If Quinn needs a place to stay and shows up here then we'll just dive in and explain it to her. If that doesn't happen then I think we should wait and you, Quinn, and I should explain it to her. Quinn meant something to her, she's never liked a babysitter so much, so I think she should be involved. But first I have to meet her and you have to get her to want you to be involved like you said." She barely waits a second before she adds on, "And you got that part about me wanting to meet her, right? Because I don't care if she wants to do this alone, I still want to meet her no matter what."

"I know," Puck responds, "I figured you would and I told her that. She needs some time though. She's lost everything in the last few weeks. She said she'd meet you, but she just wants to have a little time to… I don't know."

"After what her parents did to her, if I was her, I wouldn't look forward to meeting any new parents involved in this. And like you said, neither one of you exactly come off sounding like angels in how you ended up in this situation, which is probably making her nervous. That's all understandable. Tell her there's no immediate rush. I'd like to meet her by the holidays though," May says thoughtfully.

They sit there on the couch for a couple of minutes in silence- each thinking of the things to come, how everything was different now. Eventually Puck admits, "I don't know what I'm going to do so she knows I'm a good guy despite all the things I've done to show her otherwise."

May scoots closer to her son and wraps an arm around him. She tells him genuinely, "You are a good man. Everyone makes mistakes and your mistakes don't change the fact that that's who you grew up to be." She kisses him on the cheek before continuing, "And she'll see that by your actions. Remember, actions speak louder than words so just keep doing things to show her you care, to show her how wonderful you are."

It's good to hear that his mom thinks he's a good man. After everything he thought that she'd never be able to believe that about him now. (He still has his doubts about how good he is despite her words though.) "Thank you mom," he says, sincerely grateful for how cool she's been about all this and the advice she just gave him.

She smiles at him and declares, "You should get some sleep. You still have that glee thing tomorrow and we have plenty of time to talk more."

"Yeah," he agrees and stands up. He puts the elliptical machine back in its storage place for her. When he's done, she wraps him in a hug. He says again as he hugs her back, "Thank you Ma', for everything. I'm really sorry for all this."

When she pulls away, she can see how scared he is. He talked about it so well, had thought things out and made some decisions. But right now she saw how he was just a terrified kid in a situation more serious than he should have to deal with so young. So she smiles wider and promises, "Everything will be okay. You'll see." He nods (he wants to believe her, but with Quinn not even wanting him around apparently it's hard to believe that). She changes the subject and says, "I'm sorry I can't come tomorrow."

"It's cool," Puck assures. He offers, "Quinn will be there anyway and, like I said, she's not ready to meet you and it's not the best place for something like that."

"Quinn will be there? I didn't know she was in your glee club," May comments. She thinks for a second and decides, "You know, I'll get someone to cover for me. I want to go see you guys win your competition."

"Ma' did you hear what I just said about Quinn and everything?" Puck asks tiredly.

"I heard," she assures, "and I won't approach her, I'll make myself scarce from all your club. And I won't bring Kelyn so she doesn't see her yet. I just want to see you perform…and get a look at the girl who's having my granddaughter."

Puck's stare/glare says that he thinks this is a terrible idea.

"I'll be good. I promise," May swears.

Puck doesn't bother arguing because this seemed like one of the things she was going to be stubborn about. Instead he says goodnight to his mom finally and goes to bed feeling a little better than he has since he found out about the baby. At least now he was being honest with one of the most important people in his life. No more hiding and guilt over lying to his mom. It was emotionally exhausting to talk to his mom about everything, but now that it was over he certainly felt lighter.

(Here's something you should know: They both feel better because at least everything is out in the open now so they can start dealing with everything- no more lies, no more hiding. Or at least, that's how they thought things would go.)

* * *

**A/N:** I hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! More development in this AU direction will be coming soon. I'd like to try and make sure that as many wonderful readers as possible get a chance to finish this chapter before posting the next one so even if you don't have time to review or simply no desire to, a note saying you're ready for an update would be awesomely helpful.

Though, **please do review!** I missed hearing from many of you last chapter and there are still quite a few of you who have this on alert or favorites or both that I have yet to hear from.

Next chapter title: _I'm tired of living my life like nothing is happening _from "Waiting for a War" by the Morning Benders. This chapter title was from "Someday" by the Perishers.

Thank you for reading!


	11. Chapter 9

**A/N: First, thank you so much to the many wonderful people who reviewed!**

Second, I'm sorry that this chapter is coming later than I thought it would. Many of you were nice enough to let me know you finished reading the last update, which I greatly appreciated. But there were a few regular reviewers I was still waiting to hear from, not to mention the hit count was a bit lower than average, so I've been concerned that many readers haven't had time to catch up with the story and I'd hate to keep updating as that would result in people only getting more and more behind. However, I did promise that since I've managed to write ahead for once, I would update at a much quicker pace than usual so here it is.

Third, many of you mentioned that you're eager for Kelyn to find out about the baby and though that is coming, there are actually many other things that need to get taken care of first so it's a few chapters away.

Fourth, doesn't it suck that there's not a new episode of _Glee _this week? Hopefully the quick-er update at least somewhat makes up for it for some of you lovely readers.

Enjoy the chapter! (And be warned, it's fairly long again.)

* * *

**Cheated Hearts

* * *

**

_IX. I'm tired of living my life like nothing is happening_

(Here's something you should know: She's always been alone and she's always been lonely. This time though, she chose it.)

Saturday morning Quinn decides to take a taxi to school. It's not far so she figures it won't cost that much, but it feels too far to walk with the chill in the morning air. She gets to the school parking lot early. Ms. Pillsbury and the bus driver are the only other ones there- neither comment on her arrival from a taxi, but Ms. Pillsbury does ask if "everything" was okay. She tells her that talking to her sister and her brother-in-law really helped (because it did in a way and she didn't want pity anymore).

Rachel is the next to arrive. She's also early and peppy. (She quietly asks if everything the previous night worked out like Quinn thought it would. Rather than explain how it didn't exactly, Quinn simply responds that she's fine.)

Everyone else starts arriving- Artie, Matt, Tina, Kurt and Mercedes, Mike, Brittany and Santana, Mr. Schue. Puck is second last to arrive (despite knowing it wouldn't change anything, he got delayed trying to talk his mom out of showing up today). Jacob is the last to come- running on to the parking lot, oddly enough. Everyone gets on the bus solemnly and they all watch as Artie gets loaded on and Mr. Schue gives some last minute advice to Jacob.

Quinn takes a seat towards the very back (six rows behind where everyone's crammed into the first handful of rows), away from everyone else. She figured that she's the reason why they have creepy Jacob (who Rachel constantly has to swat away from her) instead of Finn and the reason they're therefore probably going to lose, so who would really like a reminder that she's there? No one. So she made it easy and sat in the back on the left side.

Puck gets on the bus second to last. He stayed on the ground and made sure Artie got in the lift thing okay. Then he hesitated to get on the bus full of people that he knows are okay with him being there though not necessarily okay with him. So when he does get on the bus Jacob has already gotten on and is trying to squirm his way on to Rachel's seat (she wanted one to herself in the very front so she could "prepare" on the drive to the competition). Puck grabs Jacob and tells him, "You're sitting in the very back. And if you say anything at all today I'm going to hit you, a lot." Maybe it was a little harsh, but yesterday hadn't exactly been a good day and he was missing fight club this weekend. Plus he really didn't want to watch this perv harass Rachel the whole day when he knew the perv was only there thanks to what he did to Finn. It'd just make him feel guiltier and he felt plenty guilty enough already. So he marches Jacob to the very back of the bus, past Quinn, and then walks back up and takes a seat on the right side of the bus- a couple of rows ahead of Quinn, but still a couple behind everyone else.

Oddly enough the competition was being held at a convention center in Findlay despite all the schools involved being from Lima. That was why they had to take a bus in the first place. Had it just been scheduled to be held in town everyone could have gotten there on their own, but instead they were stuck nervously trapped in a bus together for forty odd minutes.

When they get to sectionals everything pretty quickly goes to hell. The other groups are singing their songs. Ms. Pillsbury tries to be optimistic and offer that the other groups aren't doing their songs nearly as well at least, but it's not much of a comfort.

Puck keeps looking around for his mom- afraid she's going to pop up at any second and want to meet Quinn despite everything he told her about doing that now. He can't find her though. He scanned the crowd in the auditorium many times and never found her. He should probably find that comforting because she did promise she'd make herself scarce, but it only serves to worry him more.

(Quinn never bothers looking in the crowd. She doesn't want to remind herself about how she has no one to come for her.)

Finn shows up just in time. They're all fighting over what to do, making a little progress. (Quinn and Puck had both taken a bit of action- Quinn decisive and helpful, Puck realistic and slightly negative- to move things forward, both separately tired of always having things happen out of their control and eager to move forward from anything in any way). Then Finn shows up and gives them their last bit of help. Puck tries to see if things are better between them (the guy was willing to compete with him today whereas he wasn't yesterday so he figured he'd see if maybe things were miraculously okay again), but Finn quickly confirms that they're not better. Quinn tries to offer again how sorry she is, but as soon as she says his name he turns and walks toward Rachel (she wanted to say it again, she wants to say it until he understands and he isn't so hurt by what she did, but apparently he's not ready to hear it now.) She joins the rest of the group and tries not to think about how close Puck stands to her as he does the same.

They do fantastically. Begrudgingly everyone must admit that that is in large part thanks to Rachel and her ability to produce a solo-showstopper at the last minute. But their other numbers were fantastic too and they leave the stage feeling really good about themselves. The applause, all the people standing and clapping after they finished their last song, "Somebody to Love," was exhilarating.

(Quinn could have sworn she heard someone calling her name over the roar of applause, but that had to be a mistake.)

It seems to be a group consent that they're all going to end up waiting outside the judge's room to see if they could happen upon hearing the decision early. But first, before the judges even get started deciding, there's another intermission and everyone is going off to find their families from the crowd. Quinn heads for the bathroom. She needs to go again already anyway (she just went before they went on stage) plus she doesn't have any family to look for.

Quinn finally makes it through the long line in the bathroom and wanders through the halls and lobby. She finds most of the club scattered through the part of the lobby they had been gathered in earlier all with their families. She sees Rachel's dads hugging her over and over again, Kurt's dad taking a picture of Kurt by a banner that says "Glee Club Sectionals- Lima, Ohio," and Mike and Matt's parents all smiling proudly as they talk with each other and their sons. Quinn turns before any of them notice her and heads back in the direction of the bathroom (it's not that she has to go again already, she just doesn't have anyone to be with and doesn't want any of them taking pity on her for that).

"Quinn," she hears someone call and comes to a stop. She turns around and scans the many people in the hall she was heading down, but none of them are familiar. She thinks maybe she was hearing things again until she hears another, "Quinn!" A strange woman jogs up to her and says, "Thank God, we thought we wouldn't find you by the time intermission was over with all the people here." She must have noticed the look of complete confusion on Quinn's face then because she rushes to say, "Oh, I'm Kelly by the way, just let me text Eric that I found you- he was looking in another direction."

Things start to click for Quinn just as Eric finds them while Kelly's still texting. "You found her," he says to his cousin as he approaches. "Hey Quinn," he greets smiling.

"Hi," she returns smiling and understanding that they were there to see her, but not how they came to be (she knows she hadn't mentioned where the competition was). "What are you doing here?"

"We came to see you," Eric answers simply.

"And you were fantastic," Kelly compliments, "Your school was the best- by far."

"Yeah," Eric agrees and adds on, "And who knew a glee competition would be so exciting? I thought it'd be a bunch a kids standing in a group singing boring songs together. But the Stones and Queen? That was awesome."

"Thank you," Quinn says gratefully, but that didn't really leave her any less confused. She clarifies her question, "How did you know where to come though?"

"When I told Jess she googled it and found out your competition was here and I thought that that was convenient since I was here already. And I wasn't in any rush to get home so I figured I'd stick around and cheer you on," Eric explains.

"And I had to come along because it's just sad when a man his age tries to start a chant of a teenaged girl's name by himself- and a tad creepy. Unfortunately chanting "Quinn!" didn't catch on as much as we hoped," Kelly adds.

So she wasn't hallucinating when she thought she heard people screaming her name.

Eric rambles on, "It was lucky Kelly came- or at least that I told her about it because she let me borrow her camcorder so I got the whole thing on tape for Jess."

Quinn's glad her sister is going to get to see the performance and glad that someone showed up for her here. It meant more to her than they could possibly understand. But hearing about the tape and thinking of her sister watching it drew her back to the pre-performance awkwardness and tension. She sighs and admits, "Well, if you're going to show that to Jess then she's going to want to know some things. Like which one's Puck and which one's Finn."

Eric's eyes widen, "They were up there?" Quinn nods and he comments, "Well, that must have been uncomfortable."

"That pretty much sums up today," Quinn agrees.

Kelly rewound the tape until she got to a part where the whole group was on stage (leaving the conversation between Quinn and Eric for that bit, it wasn't really her business even if she knew enough to understand it). She shows it to Quinn and Eric leans over to look at it too as she asks, "Okay, who's Er supposed to point out?"

Quinn indicates which is which and silence settles between the three. She wishes she didn't have to interrupt a perfectly nice conversation to do that. But she knew her sister would really, really want to know. She'd want to know she was seeing both boys she'd heard so much about.

Since the fun of being there was already sucked away, Eric seems to figure that that made it a good time to bring up something else serious. He says, "And another reason I wanted to find where this was today and come and bring Kelly was so you could meet her. Now she's not a stranger so if you need her she's a familiar face just a phone call away."

"Yeah, anytime," Kelly agrees with a friendly smile and warm eyes. She's older than Eric, that's obvious, but not by too much. She's probably about thirty. She looks like she's lived a life full of excitement.

"Thank you," Quinn says sincerely.

"It's no problem," Kelly assures. She jokes, "I could really use as many distractions as possible from the fact that I'm now living in _Ohio_. So call or come over or I'll come to you as much as you want."

Quinn smiles gratefully. She knows she probably won't take this nice-seeming woman up on her offer though. She's trying to do things on her own and if she gets help from people (as realistically, she knows she'll need), she wants it to be the right people. Kelly may have been willing to get drawn into her mess, but Quinn really didn't want to pull any more people into it. (Her brother-in-law just changed his whole day, he's going to get back to his injured wife half a day later than he planned, just because he knew this would make her feel better. As much as it means to her that he did this and as grateful as she is, Quinn also feels guilty for the way being involved is already changing his life and her sister's.)

Quinn changes the subject to keep the conversation more fun. They went through all the trouble of coming for her, the least she could do was try to help them have a good time. She tells them about the other teams' cheating and how they figured out what to sing at the last minute and threw together their performances. She also explains how they were sabotaged so much- a story Eric and Kelly find unbelievable as what school professional would behave so poorly? She finds the YouTube clips of "Sue's Corner" for them using Eric's phone and leaves them to watch them as she rejoins the glee club for their mission to listen at the judges room door.

-o-o-o-

When everyone disperses to look for their family members, Puck goes on a mission to find his mom. He checks the food counter first because she always had a thing for Junior Mints oddly enough, but she's not one of the many people in line. He quickly makes his way through all the crowds in the lobby and the halls, scanning all the people as he walks briskly though them. She doesn't seem to be hanging out in any of the areas the other parents are though. He finally decides to head back to the theater not knowing where else to look (besides outside, which was next on his list). It's then that he finds her in what seems to be her seat- third row, center seat, in the balcony.

"Hey," he says as he approaches.

"Noah," she greets with a smile, "you were wonderful." She stands up and hugs him, kisses his cheek.

"Thanks," he returns.

She sits back down and he joins her taking the seat next to hers.

"See, I'm staying out of the way just like I said I would," May points out.

"Yeah, you are," Puck agrees. She was staying so out of the way that he had trouble finding her. He supposes he shouldn't have fought her coming as much as he did.

"I see Finn showed up," May comments.

"Yep."

"Does that mean anything for you and him?" she questions.

"No," he says with a heavy sigh.

Silence settles between them, both of them looking forward, watching a couple of men fiddle with wires and things on the otherwise empty stage.

Eventually, he asks, "Aren't you going to ask me which one she was?"

"I thought I would," May begins, "You didn't tell me what she looked like. All I had to go on was that Kelyn once mentioned that she's blonde. You didn't have many girls there to begin with- especially ruling out Santana and Rachel, both of whom I already knew. And in those dresses you really couldn't tell if anyone was hiding a small baby bump. But you did have two blonde girls up there." She turns to her son and explains, "I don't need to ask which of the two she was. I could figure that out pretty easily by the way you looked at her, every time you looked at her." Just so he knows that she figured out the right girl, May adds, "She was the shorter of the two blondes."

Puck didn't know he was so transparent. But he supposed, given the way he only rather recently figured out how he felt, that seemed about right. "Yeah, she is," he confirms.

May doesn't comment on it anymore. Puck stayed silent so it didn't seem like he wanted to talk about it. Or maybe the reason he hadn't told her (not really) was that he wasn't ready to talk about it. She had suspected it, the way he talked about Quinn last night, but here it was so instantly obvious, what this girl meant to her son. May worried that this meant that they were going to have an even harder road in front of them than she thought, but she prayed that it would be one with a better ending than they could have hoped for had her son's feelings been any less than what they clearly were. If he loved this girl, she just hoped he'd get to be with her.

-o-o-o-

They win.

A euphoria overcomes all of them when it's announced. Quinn thinks that in the haze of happiness her and Rachel even hugged each other. Everyone was hugging each other so it just happened-briefly. (Everyone but her and Finn and Finn and Puck- winning didn't do anything to distract Finn from how he felt about them now.)

Reality quickly sets in though. They all have a minute to hunt down any family if they wish to say goodbye quickly before the bus ride back, but then they have to get moving. Ms. Pillsbury has her wedding to get to so they all need to get on that bus and head back to town so she can marry a guy who they all know is the wrong man.

Despite the camaraderie of winning, Quinn heads for the same place in the back of the bus. Finn had walked to the bus with all of them and when he tried to head off to drive back to town alone Rachel suggested she go with him and he told her no. He wanted to be alone, which wasn't…Finn. Rachel, of course, managed to convince him to take her with him anyway (she threw Jacob's name around a few times- associated with "handsy") and he'd agreed. Since when did Finn find being around people so unappealing, Rachel especially? This was because of what she did to him, Quinn knew it. And since everyone heard that whole conversation between Rachel and Finn and would probably draw the same conclusions from it, Quinn distanced herself from everyone again. They didn't need a reminder of her presence, they already had a bad enough one.

Puck sits in his same spot on the bus because Quinn stayed in hers. He wasn't going to join the others and leave her completely isolated, simple as that. Hell, that was the reason he was in between the two groups in the first place. As far as he was concerned, if the other people had a problem with him sitting by them it was their problem, not his, he'd do whatever he felt like doing.

Despite most of the glee kids talking across the aisles congenially (and loudly) about their win, Quinn manages to fall asleep no more than ten minutes into the ride. It had been a long day already (it had been a long school year and it wasn't even Thanksgiving yet), she was exhausted.

Puck notices that Quinn's asleep about fifteen minutes into the ride. It was during one of his casual (and discreet, hopefully) glances back to her. Her hand's resting on her stomach, he notes. He also notices that she looks cold (it is kind of cool in the bus- no heater, and it had been a very cool autumn day). She's wearing a coat, but she's not wearing much beyond that. He looks around for his coat, but he must have left it with his mom or something because he definitely doesn't have it. He notices that Mike's coat is on the bench seat across the aisle from where him and Matt are sitting a few rows ahead of him. They're supposed to stay seated while the bus is moving, he knows that, but he's never cared before, not going to start now. He gets up and walks the few rows up the aisle, he asks Mike quietly, "Hey, Mike, you mind if I borrow your coat?"

"Nah, sure," Mike answers easily and gestures to it across the aisle with his other things. He figured that since Puck was wearing a short sleeved t-shirt and not the jacket he had earlier, he must have forgotten his and been cold. But then Matt hits his arm (pretty hard- not cool) and nods his head to the back of the bus. When he sees what Matt felt needed his attention, he's getting Brittany's attention in the seat in front of them.

Puck had walked past his seat and all the way back to Quinn's. He leaned over and placed Mike's coat over her gently. Lingering for a minute and just watching her sleep before releasing the jacket and standing up right again. It's then, as he's still watching her, that he notices the roar of talking isn't there anymore, it's silent. He looks back down the bus and everyone's eyes are on him (even the bus driver's in the rearview mirror). He glares, just a little, and everyone turns back around, pretending like they didn't see anything at all (though he notices that three of them now have their phones out, whereas they didn't before).

When Quinn wakes up, she finds herself warm but uncomfortable- because this is a bus after all. They're just pulling to a stop in the school parking lot as she awakens. Some people quickly get off the bus (Puck is one of them). She moves only to realize why she felt warm. "Who's jacket is this?" she asks those left on the bus (because one of them has to know).

Kurt, Mercedes, Tina, and Ms. Pillsbury glance around at each other, seeming unsure, which is odd. Finally it's Artie who speaks up from the lift he's just settled into (Puck and Matt waiting below outside to help him out of it), "It's Mike's." (She didn't ask who gave her the jacket, she asked who it belonged to.)

After Artie is off the bus the rest of them get off. Quinn heads straight for Mike to give him back his jacket. She extends it with a warm, "Thank you."

"Don't thank me," Mike says honestly.

Quinn doesn't understand but brushes it off that he must have just been being modest.

Rachel is suddenly there looking chipper. She declares that they should all go out together and celebrate. She looks like she's expecting everyone to say no, and she's therefore prepared to argue, but Matt and Mike quickly agree that they feel like pizza and everyone seems to get out their phones at once to text their families and let them know the change in plans.

Quinn knows she was invited just like everyone else, but she's not sure if she should go until Kurt says as he heads for his car and walks past her, "Come on Q, you're riding in the best car here- mine."

That was nice of Kurt so Quinn's absolutely not going to turn down going out with everyone after that. However, as she follows him she wonders what everyone else is going to do for a ride. She gets into the back seat as Mercedes climbs in the front with Kurt and it's after he starts the car that they both seem to realize what Quinn just did. He drives around to the place by where the bus was where everyone's still waiting. He rolls down his windows as they hear Artie insist, "I can just call my dad for a ride and meet all of you there, it's no problem."

Artie doesn't seem to be the real problem though. It's that the only two cars left to drive people (since Kurt had headed off to his with only two people in tow) were Santana's and Puck's. It would be just enough seating if everyone was willing to ride with anyone else and not be selective.

Rachel settles it declaring that Puck and Matt will get Artie into Puck's front seat and put his wheel chair in the back, Tina will ride in the backseat of Puck's truck, Matt and Mike and Brittany will ride with Santana, and if he'll have her, she'll ride with Kurt. Kurt teases Rachel by starting to drive off with out her. She gets in the car though, in the back seat with Quinn, with an exasperated sigh. "I have no idea how it took them six whole minutes to figure that out. Santana refused to have some of us in her car and that's fine, but it wasn't that hard to figure out a way for all of us to get there if they would have just listened to me sooner," Rachel complains.

"Who did Santana say she didn't want in her car? 'Cause I thought she was starting to come around to some of us," Mercedes comments.

"Mostly just me," Rachel admits. She explains, "She didn't seem too keen on the idea of Tina and Artie, but she didn't say that exactly. But the real problem was that Tina didn't want to ride with her, Matt and Mike seemed wary of it for some reason even though they seem like they're friends, and Artie didn't think he could go in anyone's car."

"Santana's a horrible driver," Quinn supplies, "Matt and Mike have ridden with her before, they were probably wary because they've experienced her road rage."

"That makes sense for her," Kurt remarks.

"But doesn't Brittany ride with her every day?" Rachel questions confused, because if Santana was really that scary of a driver wouldn't Brittany avoid riding with her instead of doing it all the time?

"I think so, but Brit's kind of oblivious. I don't think she'd notice," Mercedes suggests.

Then Kurt launches into telling the two girls in the back seat the news they recently found out about Brittany and Santana's relationship since they hadn't been there to hear it themselves (the details of which- it being in a conversation regarding the true paternity of Quinn's baby- they gloss over). It shocks Rachel, but Quinn informs them of how she's suspected as much for bit now and how there were signs that she should have sooner.

Everyone hangs out at the decided upon pizza restaurant for a while. Before they even finish ordering Rachel has already decided that they have to put together a performance for Mr. Schue as a thank you and since he didn't get to see them win (and, though they don't say it, because Ms. Pillsbury was probably married to someone else by now).

Despite the small group of people Quinn and Puck manage to avoid direct contact or even having to actually talk to each other. They simply manage to sit there as part of a larger group without it seeming like a big deal- pretending just like they always have.

After Rachel's been deciding exactly what they would sing and how they would perform it and rambling on about it for far too long, Kurt becomes the third person to head home (Santana and Brittany having ditched the rest of them nearly an hour ago). He'd been Mercedes' ride there, but she was spending the night with Tina now so a ride home wasn't necessary. Quinn had been yawning quite a bit and he suspected she may want to leave too. (He also knew she no longer had a car, she didn't have anyone to call who could come get her, and the only other person there with a car was Puck and things seemed a bit awkward between them.) So he quietly offers her a ride.

Quinn would really prefer if everyone didn't find out she's staying at a hotel now. It makes her life sound even sadder- if that's possible at this point. But cab fare from this pizza place they ended up at would be more than her ride to school and she needed to save as much money as possible. So she accepts Kurt's offer for a ride. (She's not really friends with any of these people so it was odd to be hanging out with them, but she knew that when she left she'd be all alone again- for the rest of the weekend. So even though she had been so tired she wanted to leave over an hour ago, she had hung around just to be around people.)

They say goodnight to everyone as they head out and Quinn notices how Puck seems surprised that she's leaving now (that it's not him giving her a ride). They leave quickly and Kurt asks her where he's dropping her off before he pulls out of his parking space.

"The Wingate," she tells him.

He seems surprised. As he pulls out of the parking space he questions, "I thought you said something about your sister finding you a permanent place to stay?"

"She is trying to help me figure that out," Quinn answers, "but it's going to take some time so I'm at The Wingate for the week."

"Oh," Kurt responds, not knowing what else to say. It seemed like a logical idea. A permanent solution to her housing problem would take some time and a hotel was a good place to stay when one didn't have anywhere else to go. Still, it didn't feel like the whole truth.

"You won't tell everyone, right?" Quinn questions. "It feels like everyone's found out so much about my life lately. Everyone learning even more, especially that I'm living at a hotel now, doesn't sound at all appealing."

Kurt can understand that. It did seem like they knew a lot about Quinn and Puck and Finn (though clearly not everything still) yet they knew very little about most of the people in the club (he can't think of anything he knows about Mike or Matt beside the fact that they're on the football team too). "No one needs to know," he promises her.

He pulls up to the curb outside the hotel and she gets out of the car. She pauses with the door open and says gratefully, "Thank you- for everything."

"No problem Q," he responds easily. "I'll see you here at seven fifteen Monday morning. Be on time too. I can't afford to be late to my first period anymore," he directs.

"You don't have to do that. I can walk or take a cab- it's what I did today," Quinn returns. It's not that she didn't appreciate the offer, she did, but she didn't need someone going out of their way just to give her a ride when she did have other methods of getting to school.

"I'm going to be out here Monday morning so you better be," Kurt insists.

She smiles gratefully and thanks him again. They exchange goodnights and she heads into the hotel as he drives away.

Quinn calls her sister soon after getting back to her room, knowing her sister would want her to call and tell her how everything went even though her husband probably already had. They don't get into anything too serious, no plans for where Quinn could possibly go when her week at the hotel ends, but she makes plans for Sunday, something necessary to do that will get her out of the hotel room and from being alone in it the entire day.

-o-o-o-

Puck's Sunday starts with his mom knocking on his door at noon.

"What are you still doing in bed?" she asks.

"Sleeping," he responds turning over and hoping she would leave.

"If you want to win a girl over then you shouldn't be sleeping, you have work to do. In case you've forgotten, the baby puts a time limit on how long you have to prove yourself to her," May declares.

Right. He really probably should be getting started on that. Puck sits up, rubs the sleep from his eyes and admits to his mom, "I don't know where to start though. I don't know what to do."

She chews the inside of her cheek considering for a beat before suggesting, "Well, good men don't flunk out of high school so you may want to start with your homework and any extra credit to do to bring your grades up. If I was in Quinn's situation, needing to re-learn that you're a good man, proving you're responsible in your own life would definitely make progress towards that."

"Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks," Puck responds because that made sense. He may have told his mom that he just wanted to be involved in the rest of what was going to happen with Quinn and the baby, no matter what that was, but that was the minimum of what he wanted to accomplish. Ideally he wanted to prove he was worthy of both of them, that he could take care of both of them, make a good life (though he still needed to figure out a way to make sure Quinn got to go to school and everything else she wanted because he didn't want her being with him to mean she missed out on her dreams). And it made sense that he needed to put his own life in order, make sure he graduates and get a job and stop screwing around like some immature teenager.

So Puck spends Sunday catching up on all the homework he had due in the last week (he hoped he could maybe get some credit for it) and all the homework he had due the next day. It was a struggle for a lot of it. Surprisingly despite his lack of attendance to any math class in recent years, it was the one subject that wasn't so hard for him to get through that he felt like lighting his textbook on fire. He managed to get through all his homework eventually. If he was going to keep doing this and actually improve in his classes though, it probably wouldn't hurt to get a tutor. Who, who knew him, would be willing to tutor him though?

-o-o-o-

Though she's still exhausted, Quinn gets up early and gets ready for the day and heads down to the free breakfast. It had a time limit so she had to get up early to make it and she wasn't willing to let a free meal (well, included in the price of the room) go to waste when she knew she needed to be very conservative about spending money.

Since she's up and it's early (and she's therefore not as likely to run into kids from school), Quinn decides to just go ahead and do what she intended to today right after she finishes her breakfast. She walks to the nearest grocery store, Ray's Supermarket.

Quinn's hotel room had a mini fridge and a microwave. Rather than getting something to eat out every night she stayed at the hotel she figured it'd be cheaper (and probably healthier) if she bought some food to keep with her and ate out less. Also, though a school lunch wasn't especially expensive, it wasn't nutritious and she didn't want the baby eating crap because she was.

It's odd being in the grocery store, she's not sure why (possibly because every single one of the few people in the store at this hour of the morning- just before ten a.m.- seems to look at her curiously and notice the slight bump that the shirt she's wearing today doesn't really hide). She grabs a basket and browses each aisle carefully, taking her time to figure out what combination of purchases would be the best value and most useful.

After much browsing and consideration and math calculated in her head, Quinn settles on a few things. She decides to buy enough yogurts so that she could have one every day. She liked yogurt and it was healthy (lots of calcium) and it was cheap. She got some crackers too because she figured that between the two items as snacks maybe she'd be able to buy less dinner, be less hungry for it if she filled up on snacks. She buys a loaf of bread and peanut butter for her lunches to bring to school. Both will go a long way and though peanut butter was high in fat it was also high in protein, which she figured was probably good for the baby. Then, because it smells so good, Quinn decides to get one of the already cooked rotisserie chickens. She figures it could be for lunches or dinners- several of them possibly- so it's worth the nearly five-dollar cost. She doesn't have a freezer but she knew she'd want some other options to go with the chicken or even just alone so she buys one frozen pasta dinner and one bag of frozen peas. She figures she'll just cook them when she gets back and save them in the refrigerator for when she wants them. On that thought and needing something for her lunch, she buys Ziplock bags and something she can re-heat food on. She adds a small bag of baby carrots to her cart because she had read they'd be good for the baby. Also, anything sugary had sounded so good and once she was in the bakery section there was no way she was leaving without indulging a little- she gets a container of a dozen brownies.

Unfortunately one thing Quinn knew she would need would be utensils and the store only had them in packs of twenty-four. They weren't expensive in that amount, but she had no use for getting so many. She sighs and decides not to get them. She figures she'll just have to see if the room service (which only offered a few things at slightly ridiculous prices) would bring some for her (without a charge hopefully) then she could just wash them off and keep using them all week. Either that or she'd have to get dinner to-go somewhere tonight that would give her plastic ones she could re-use.

It's heading out of the paper goods aisle resolved to the idea that she'd just have to make something else work that Quinn finds herself nearly walking right into a familiar face.

"Quinn," Mrs. Hudson says, seeming nearly as surprised as Quinn to see her there.

"Mrs. Hudson," Quinn returns, feeling anxious and guilty already.

"It's still Carol," she returns.

"I'm so sorry for everything. I shouldn't have taken advantage of Finn or your hospitality and I'm going to pay you back for everything- for the room, for food. I just need to find a way to get more money first, but then I promise I'll pay you back," Quinn blurts out, her guilt getting to her in the presence of a woman she knows has pretty good reason to hate her.

"You don't have to do that," Carol tells her, seeming surprised at the out pouring from the girl before her. Before Quinn can insist on paying her back, Carol tells Quinn something she didn't think she'd be saying to her for a while longer (she didn't think she'd be seeing her this soon), "I was only twenty-two when I had Finn. And it was only two months later that I became a widow. I was terrified. I wasn't supposed to have to do everything on my own. But I had my parents and my husband's sisters and my friends. They were all there for me through everything. My parents spent just about every day with me and Finn until Finn was six years old." She sighs and continues telling Quinn, "I know you did what you did because you were scared. I understand that. It doesn't make what you did right, but I understand how you got caught up doing the things you did."

Quinn, crying now, nods grateful for the older woman's understanding. She confesses tearfully, "I never meant to hurt Finn."

"I know," Carol assures, "May Puckerman's a close friend. I talked to her last night and she filled me in on some of the things she learned from her son. I know it wasn't just some random hurtful thing." She had learned a lot last night talking to May- despite the fact that she knew that if Finn found out he wouldn't be pleased she was talking to her. Just in case Quinn could get the wrong idea from what she said, Carol adds on, "Finn doesn't know that yet. He's not ready to hear anything yet. I don't think I should be the one to tell him when he is ready."

Quinn nods again, tears slowing. "I know. There's a lot I need to say to him – when he wants to hear it," Quinn returns, wiping the rest of her tears away.

Carol smiles a little. She glances at Quinn's basket (she learned from May that though they didn't have confirmation, the assumption was that the girl was living at a hotel by herself now). She offers, "Next time you need groceries come by the Save-A-Lot when I'm working. I'll give you my employee discount. You remember my schedule, right?"

Quinn nods and says gratefully, "Thank you."

Carol knows that right now Finn wouldn't like her being nice to or helping Quinn. But she also knew her son and knew that he cared about his best friend and he cared about Quinn. She knew she didn't hear everything and if her son did, she had faith that he'd start to come around to both of them again. Or at least she hoped her son wouldn't be so hurt by everything that he'd lose these two people he cared about.

Just to make this whole encounter seem less serious and bleak (and because the poor girl in front of her still looks near tears), Carol jokes how she has to always sneak in and out of this store quickly- not wanting to get caught here by anyone who knows she works at their competition. Once she gets a small smile out of Quinn she decides her work is done, wishes her well, and says that she'd see her around.

Quinn, done with her shopping, heads for the checkout. All her things add up to just over twenty-five dollars (which seems like a whole lot of money considering that she technically doesn't have any money of her own anymore).

She heads back to the hotel not feeling any less guilty for the things she's done, but she is extremely relieved that someone who has reason to despise her for those things had actually been kind to her instead. She'll definitely have to repay Carol for that someday.

-o-o-o-

They rehearse during lunch- several times, damn Rachel.

After school they perform for Mr. Schue and he seems very touched by the gesture. When it's over though, he quickly excuses himself from the group and apologizes for running out. No one has any idea what that's about, but if they don't have a reason to stick around after school any longer today, then none of them are too keen on doing so.

As she had done her homework the previous day something had plagued Quinn's mind. Well, actually, ever since the fall the baby's well being had been particularly present in her mind. She did some research online and found out that there was a clinic in Kenton that wouldn't turn away anyone, even if they couldn't pay. (Though she knew that if she had to she could use one of the checks from Eric to get enough cash to pay.) Also, there happened to be busses there and back four times a day (morning, mid-day, afternoon, and evening). It'd be fifteen dollars each way for the forty minute ride, but making sure the baby was okay was well worth that cost.

So as she realizes that glee club had ended early enough for her to catch that bus today (and not have to wait until Wednesday like she thought she'd have to- figuring the performance and celebration today and practice tomorrow would take too long), she decides she might as well go today. She really couldn't imagine making it until Wednesday continuing to wonder and worry if the baby was okay and still remain sane.

Kurt had been discreet about having given her a ride to school and about knowing where she's staying, which she appreciated. He let her have her privacy and after school and glee when he inquired if she needed a ride anywhere he continued to let her have that as he didn't question her when she said she had a ride to where she needed to go.

Quinn discretely separated herself from the direction most of the glee club headed (the parking lot) and made her way to the front of the school. Thankfully the bus that would take her to the Greyhound station came along before anyone from glee club came driving/riding down the street. She got to the station, checked the schedule to make sure it was the same as she had found online, and purchased her tickets. She only had just enough time to visit the rest room before the bus started boarding. It was fairly empty- Kenton not being a wildly popular destination, it was a rather small town free from attractions after all. Quinn settled into a seat towards the middle of the bus and tried to get some of her homework done on the ride (it was a necessary distraction, otherwise she would have spent the whole time thinking of every bad thing a doctor could possibly say about the baby and the effects of the fall).

-o-o-o-

Puck's afternoon pretty much sucked.

First, Quinn barely looked at him all day. Rachel, in her diabolical choreography, even had them touching each other, but still, Quinn never looked at him that he noticed (eyes always downcast). Then she just seemed to disappear. He still didn't even know where she was staying or how to get a hold of her since her parents canceled service for her phone.

Second, he figured he'd go see Ms. Pillsbury after glee ended (she should've still been there, it was early enough) and see if maybe she knew of a good job, possibly how to get some help with some of his classes, and anything else that could possibly help his/their situation. He figured she should be there (everyone knew the wedding didn't happen and Coach T went on the honeymoon), but on top of not being in her office, it also seemed to be all packed up (that didn't seem like a good sign- and here he kept hearing speculation that Mr. Schue had broken up the wedding, but now that really didn't seem like the case).

Third, Puck decided to apply for a job at any place that would let him fill out an application after school. Quite a few places let him fill one out, but not a single one of them seemed to be hiring now or any time soon. Stupid bad economy.

So Puck finally went home, defeated. He thought he'd just be able to do something awesome, something that proved he was a man who could take care of a family, and Quinn would notice and she'd…want him. He'd been the man taking care of his family before, he figured it shouldn't be too hard to switch to being that person all the time now. And it wasn't so hard to be responsible or be mature (okay, that was a little hard), he did all his homework again that night and some extra credit a few of his teachers had been nice enough to offer when he asked about improving his grades, but he couldn't find anything else to do and he felt like he wasn't making any progress on getting her (it had only been a few days he'd been trying, but it felt like forever already).

Quietly after dinner, while his sister is distracted by the TV, Puck's mom asks him how everything is going. Is he making any progress? Where is it that Quinn's staying? He tells her simply, answering both questions, "I don't know."

Tomorrow, he'll just have to figure out a way to try harder.

-o-o-o-

The Kenton-Hardin Health Department clinic wasn't extremely busy. Quinn had expected a long wait (and possibly not getting to see anyone at all, she feared), but she knew the wait couldn't be too long (by the time she got there, they'd only be open for two more hours). After an hour and a half of waiting discreetly in an empty corner of the seating area, doing her homework after filling out the necessary forms (she hadn't known what to put for some questions, left a lot of blanks), a nurse finally calls her name.

"Quinn?" a middle aged lady calls. Quinn gets up, gathers her things, and heads back with the nurse. She's lead to an exam room, told to take a seat on the table. The nurse takes a seat as well, flipping through her papers with a pen at the ready. She comments, "Let's see, we'll need to get a bit more of these filled out." She scans over them for a second before she says, "First, let's see what you're in for though."

As the woman flips back a couple of pages, Quinn answers, "I fell down last Thursday. I'm just into my second trimester and I read that spotting would be a sign that the fall hurt the baby, which I haven't had, and it wasn't that bad of a fall, but I've been worried. I thought I should get it checked out. Plus, I wanted to get it confirmed that it's a girl- the last technician said it was but I wasn't very far along at the time so I didn't know if I could trust that."

"Okay," the woman says with a reassuring smile, "everything is probably okay, but it is a good idea to be sure." She returns to the information on the papers and asks, "And you don't have any insurance?"

Quinn shakes her head and explains, "I had insurance, through my parents, but they…they kicked me out."

The nurse glances at the chart again, at the birthday written in (sixteen years old, she does the math in her head, and abandoned by her family- she wishes it were the first time she'd seen that). "Do you know for sure if they canceled your insurance though? Because if they didn't then we can still bill their insurance for you. They could try to refuse to pay, but they wouldn't have much luck. And if they didn't pay at all then that would be bad for them- damage their credit," the nurse suggests.

Making her parents pay for something for the baby sounded like appealing revenge, but she didn't have her insurance card (figured it wouldn't be necessary because she didn't think she could use it anymore), so Quinn declines, "As appealing as that is, I can pay if I have to. I don't have a permanent address at the moment, would I get the bill by the end of the week?"

"It's unlikely."

Quinn considers it. She had been worried about this. She knew that Jessica and Matt would pay for this. She hated to cost them anything when she knew they were having hard times, but she had told Jess about the fall and she had agreed that she should get checked out just in case. If the bill wouldn't come soon then she couldn't get it sent to the hotel and she didn't know where she'd be after that. She knew Puck would be okay with her having it sent to his address, but even though she knew he told his mom, she didn't know if they told Kelyn and she didn't want Kelyn to find mail to her sent to their home if they hadn't (it'd be too hard to explain, Kelyn was a smart girl). She knew Mr. Schue's address too. Considering everything she knew he learned about her and everything she could assume he knew (since rumors were swirling of his split with his wife), she didn't really relish the idea of having to talk to him any time soon (didn't even like being in glee with him despite the fact that she knew he wasn't ever looking at her judgmentally). But she'd figured she'd have to get over that eventually anyway (she was probably going to need his help at some point) so she might as well just get it over with sooner rather than later. So she gives the nurse his address and decides she'll warn him about it, talk to him, by the end of the week.

There's a few more questions the nurse has- about the fall. After Quinn answers them the nurse tells her that the doctor will be in and will do an ultra sound (so put on a gown) in a few minutes. Before she leaves though, she pauses and tells Quinn, "You know, as a minor and as a pregnant woman you would qualify for Medicaid- as would your child. You should look into getting it to greatly reduce your medical costs. There's also Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC, which provides pregnant women with food- nutritious food like milk, eggs, cereal, cheese. There's an office for them in Lima, you should go down there and sign up, save yourself some money on food. If you're keeping your baby, they supply you with formula and food for it and you for the first five years of its life. There's a lot of resources out there that can help you out, you should have someone help you look into them."

"Thank you," Quinn says gratefully. That was all valuable information and good advice. She planned on looking into things like that- government help and insurance for herself now that she didn't have her parents- but even though she had decided to do everything alone and she wanted to control her life again, make decisions, she had been hesitating to dive into everything (because what if she did everything wrong?)

She gets changed and it isn't long before the doctor comes in and gets started on the ultrasound. He quickly declares that the baby is perfectly fine and it is indeed a girl. (This ultrasound is just as scary as the last. It's possibly even more terrifying considering she's here alone. But she takes a few deep breaths to push away the tears forming in her eyes. She has to get used to doing things like this alone, she'd already decided that that's just how things were going to be from now on.)

When she's done at the clinic, both her and the baby declared to be perfectly healthy, Quinn has some time before her bus back to Lima. She decides to grab dinner. There aren't very many choices between the clinic and the bus station (given the size of the town, she gets the feeling there aren't that many choices at all). There's one diner, but it's small and she thinks she'll attract attention going in there (a young pregnant girl eating alone), but there's also two fast food places: Burger King and McDonalds (both probably not too good for the baby, but she's hungry so she lets that go this time). She prefers the food at the former over the latter, but the idea of seeing a Burger King uniform, their fries, or one of their crowns, brings back a memory she'd rather not relive right now. She goes to McDonalds, has a quick and cheap dinner, and heads back to Lima on the Greyhound, walking the few blocks to the hotel quickly because it's dark out now and she doesn't feel particularly safe. She sleeps easier that night, knowing for sure that the baby was okay.

-o-o-o-

First thing Tuesday morning Quinn stops in at Ms. Pillsbury's office. She had been too exhausted (and still had homework) when she got back from her trip to Kenton the previous day to get to work on the list of things she knew she needed to take care of and discuss with someone as the nurse at the clinic suggested, but she knew she needed to get it done sooner rather than later. So she decided to schedule an appointment with Ms. Pillsbury to give herself a deadline.

Ms. Pillsbury is especially chipper this morning (and oddly, unpacking her things from boxes and returning them to specific places around her office). They set up a meeting for tomorrow, right after school.

Throughout the day Quinn notices that people seem to be whispering about her more. Word must be spreading about what happened last Friday and the truths that were revealed. She tries to ignore it.

Lunch is interesting. She had been eating alone in any out of the way place she could find for a while now. Even when she was with Finn she had been alone. He would eat with the football players, where she never felt welcome. But today as she heads to her locker after finishing her lunch, she runs into Santana and Brittney in the hall and something is different about them. "What are you doing with your hair down? Coach Sylvester would probably kick you off the team for not following her ponytail rule."

"You didn't hear?" Santana asks. Quinn shakes her head so Santana continues, "She was suspended yesterday. Everyone's saying she's going to be gone the rest of the school year."

"And since she's not here right now we're taking advantage and letting our hair down from those awful ponytails she makes us wear. We look way more awesome now," Brittany adds on.

Quinn, in an effort to be nicer to people (she's hurt so many and she doesn't want to be that person), agrees with Brittany that they do look better (though honestly she'd always agreed with Coach Sylvester's logic for the ponytails even though she didn't like wearing them every day).

She can't believe Coach Sylvester was gone though. She didn't care that the woman that kicked her off of the Cheerios and harassed the glee club was gone, but she honestly never expected that anyone at this school would get the backbone to actually make Sue Sylvester leave. If Sue Sylvester is gone though then the Cheerios need a coach and she is going to need a job. Quinn decides that she needs to see principal Figgins. They have glee after school though so in between classes she schedules an appointment with Figgins (thankfully he was free right after school) and approaches Mr. Schue. As she suspected, it felt weird to talk to him. She told him she'll be late for glee practice and apologizes for it. He says that it's fine and asks concerned if everything is alright. She assures him it is. (The weirdness is all in her mind- guilt over the things she's done.)

When school is over she gets to principal Figgins' office as quick as she can (if she hurries she may not be late for glee as it starts ten minutes after the bell).

"Ms. Fabray, what brings you to my office today?" Mr. Figgins greets with a smile (he glances at her stomach though, as most people do).

She decides to dive in like the assertive person she used to constantly be, "I heard that Coach Sylvester was no longer coaching the Cheerios and I'd like to replace her as their coach." Before he can start to say no, she offers, "I was their captain for two years. I know all the routines. I know the one they're doing for Nationals by heart. I know all the Cheerios, their strengths, how to get them to do things, how to get them to perform at their best. And I wouldn't harass them and get the school caught up in lawsuits."

Principal Figgins thinks for a beat, but sighs as he begins, "Ms. Fabray you're a very good student and I've always liked you. I've heard about what's been going on within your family. Your parents, when they would come here about your sister, would always talk to me like I was their waiter. They also made sure that my family's application got rejected at their country club despite the fact that I'm a fairly prominent man in this town. I'd like to help you, especially since they wouldn't like it, but unfortunately I can't give you the position. I'd like to. I believe you would do well with them like you said- and I could pay you far less, which is desirable considering our three-year-running budget crisis. But Sue Sylvester still has the position. She'll be back from a vacation in two weeks."

So yesterday she had been suspended but today he was saying she'd be at work again soon? That only added up to one thing to Quinn, "She's blackmailing you."

"Yes," he confirms agitatedly, "I didn't even do anything, she just managed to make it seem like I did." He rationalizes his caving to her manipulation, "She is the best coach we have though. She has the only team that wins anything. Besides, if she didn't get her job back this way she would have found another way eventually."

"I understand," Quinn says, accepting that there wasn't an opportunity here like she thought.

As Quinn begins to stand to leave, principal Figgins asks, "Would you be interested in possibly substituting for her as coach while she's gone?"

Quinn settles back into her chair surprised. "Yes," she responds immediately. She needs money, she's interested in any way she can get some (with in reason of course).

He warns, "We have a provision for our coaches to be able to get subs to fill in for them when they're out and I know that the more successful the team is that the coach is responsible for, the more we pay the subs. Seeing as the Cheerios are national champions, I think it pays well. I'm not sure it's a provision this school year. Sue usually doesn't miss a day until after they've won so they may have eliminated it since it hasn't been necessary in the past. Since she's gone now though and since the Cheerio's do have nationals coming up I think it'd be a good idea to have someone fill in for her- even if she won't like it. I'll see if there's money for it, and I did already promise the team this week off since Sue had been working them so hard, but if there's money for it and you want the position, you can start practices back up whenever you want."

"I'm sure they do need a break at this point, but Nationals aren't too far away so they should really be back to practicing by Saturday," Quinn informs him.

"She makes them have Saturday practices?" Figgins questions. But on second thought that doesn't surprise him at all. He brushes it off and moves on, "I'll look into the budget and see if we can work this out. I'll let you know if you can be the sub as soon as I can. And get a work permit from Ms. Pillsbury just in case. I don't think we'll have to pay you under the table, we should be able to do this legally."

"Okay," Quinn agrees. She knows that if she hurries she should be making it into glee before they get started (it had just become ten minutes after the bell rang). She stands up and says sincerely, "Thank you."

Figgins gives her a short nod and wishes her a good evening as she heads out, which she politely returns.

Quinn rushes to the choir room feeling pretty good about herself. She didn't really want to coach the girls that surely mocked her behind her back now (just as she would have done to them when she was at the top of their social pyramid), but she needed to find a job, money, because it was simply a necessity to continue to survive (for both of them to continue to survive).

When Quinn gets to the choir room some of the gleeks are still finding their way to a seat as Mr. Schue has apparently just called for their attention. The seating pattern of everyone is noticeably spread out. Quinn hurries to the closest seat (taking the closest so it doesn't seem like she's choosing sides or people), which happens to be on the far right of the chairs, next to Artie (nice, neutral seating).

Mr. Schue smiles a little at her when he notice her hasty entrance, seeming glad she made it on time after all (well, on time to him, he was notoriously slightly late). Then he dives in excitedly, "Guys, I had an epiphany last night. There are patterns to things judges tend to like to hear. We'll be getting to all the ones I can find before regional's to help prepare you guys, but I thought a good way to start out after your win would be to do the first thing I realized they like." He smiles bigger, seeming especially happy today, and continues, "Duets. Judges seem to have a soft spot for really excellently executed duets. Whether just two members of a team are involved or if they manage to work in more somehow, doing a really sweet duet seems have some sway with judges. So, your assignment is to partner up and do a duet- this week or next week. And since you guys just won and do deserve a break, I will accept if you just hand in a list of songs that we could have all of you or some of you duet. I want you to take this seriously. It is important, that's why I wanted to get started on it so soon after your win, but I do understand if some of you will need to take the easy route on this one- especially since I know a couple of you will be taking the PSAT this weekend-but do try to actually perform something." Noticing Rachel's promptly raised hand as soon as he had paused there (intending to be finished), Mr. Schue adds on, directed toward Rachel, "And of course you are welcome to both sing and provide us with a list of songs you think we should do as a duet." He checks, "Everyone clear? Any questions?" Since no one speaks up he dismisses them for the day to get to work on their new assignment, saying he'd hang around for a while in case any of them wanted to discuss anything.

Rachel pounces on Finn. Kurt quickly pairs up with Mercedes. Brittany and Santana leave, quickly followed by Matt and Mike. Tina dawdles a bit, seeming to think over what she could possibly do for this assignment, but decides to leave. Puck isn't far behind (he knows he can't work with Quinn and the other girls won't want to work with him either- plus this seems like a real pansy-ass assignment so he figures he'll skip the singing and maybe do a list).

Quinn is surprised when, as she gathered her bag, Artie turns to her and says quietly, "Quinn?" She looks up and he continues, "Would you be my partner for the duet?"

Quinn had figured she'd just do the list. It was too complicated for her to work with some of the guys and she figured the others wouldn't be particularly keen on working with her (plus Matt and Mike didn't seem to like solos so she figured they wouldn't do it at all, which ruled out two guys). Figuring he was asking because he had reached the same conclusion about her possible partners, she smiles and tells him, "You don't have to partner with me just because it's pretty clear no one else will want to. I'll be fine doing a list on my own. You can pick the person you really want to."

"I want to work with you," Artie assures earnestly, "we never got to last time and I was looking forward to it." Despite the fact that the rest of the people aren't likely to over hear them (being spread out), he leans in and whispers, "Besides, I already kind of have an idea for what I want to do and it has to do with some things we discussed before, which no one else really knows about."

Quinn deciphers that to mean that whatever he had already thought of for a duet, had to do with Tina. If he was going to come up with good reasons and be nice enough to insist on working with her, Quinn wasn't going to turn down that kindness. She smiles and accepts, "Okay. I'd love to be your duet partner."

"Great," Artie beams at her, "are you free this afternoon? We could go over to my house and figure out what we're doing and practice whatever we decide. You can stay for dinner too, my parents would love to have you."

Quinn smiles ruefully and responds, "I think you should mention my condition to them before you assume that."

"They know," Artie assures, "I tell them about all my friends. I tell them about everything actually. And I am certain that they'd like to meet you, but they'd also just like to have anyone stay for dinner. Dinners have felt kind of empty since my brother left for college a couple months ago. They'd love the company." He can see that Quinn's debating now, so he encourages her to pick conceding by asking, "Please say you'll come tonight? Unless you're busy. Because I was really hoping to get this done soon. I'm kind of really anxious for any results. I should have done something like this a while ago."

Well how can she say no to that? She didn't really believe that any parents would like to see their teenager bring home a pregnant teen, but then he went and added a bit that clearly indicated that he wanted to get the duet done soon because he wanted Tina to know whatever he's looking to express. If he wanted to tell her how he felt, be honest with her, she wasn't going to do anything to put a damper on that. She agrees, "Okay," she adds on a condition, "but please, for my piece of mind, warn your parents I'm coming over."

"No problem," Artie gives in easily, "I have to call to let my mom know glee's over anyway." He checks with her to make sure she does need a ride with him (he didn't think she had her car anymore, but he didn't want assume since he tried not to listen to gossip). Then he does as she asks. As he predicted, his mom sounds just as pleased about Quinn coming over as she does when he has anyone come over. His parents were cool like that.

Quinn's nervous as they wait for Artie's mom to get there. They sat outside and started talking about what duets they definitely shouldn't do (the really cheesy and predictable ones that judges probably heard all the time) and as good of a conversation like that with Artie was, the feeling nagged at Quinn for the whole thirteen-minute wait.

Then Artie's mom pulled up. She got out of the van and opened the back door and slid out a ramp before she came over to her son and his friend. She said hello to her son, he began rolling to the ramp as he made a quick introduction, "Mom this is Quinn, Quinn my mom."

She wore a warm smile and extended her hand to Quinn as she said genuinely, "Quinn, it's wonderful to meet you."

"You too Mrs. Abrams," Quinn returned politely as she shook the nice woman's hand, relieved that Artie had not been mistaken about at least his mother being okay with her.

"It's Mary," she tells her, still wearing her smile. "You hop into the front seat honey," she directs as she does something with Artie's chair in the back (Quinn's not quite sure what).

As soon as Mary's done in the back and settled behind the wheel she starts making friendly conversation. First she mentions how wonderful the glee club was at the competition- especially since they improvised, which she still couldn't believe. Then she asks about the new assignment. She makes a joke about how they should do "Islands In the Stream," which, in her day, was a very popular duet.

By the time they get to Artie's house, Quinn understands where Artie gets his kindness from. His mom didn't glance toward her stomach once, didn't look at her with judging eyes, didn't seem to treat her any differently than she would any person, and none of it at all seemed to be a conscious effort on the woman's part to be nice, it just seemed to be who she was (just like Artie seemed to be that naturally good-hearted). Though lately she had been wary in all environments (it always seemed like there were scrutinizing eyes on her), she was quickly put at ease in this one.

She's thrown when they do reach Artie's house. It's nearly as big as her… her parent's house. Her family was one of the wealthiest in town and she thought they knew everyone else who was of similar stature, but apparently not. She's even more convinced that Artie's family has a lot more money than she had any idea of as he leads her to the basement- also known as the rehearsal/fun room. It's got a ramp for Artie to get down and there's musical instruments, what looks like recording equipment, a big TV, video game consoles, karaoke, couches, a refrigerator/freezer, and a popcorn machine.

Artie's used to people's surprise at the, in his opinion, pretty kick-ass basement so he volunteers answers before Quinn asks. He explains that his dad is a judge so they do pretty well. Didn't start out that way though; when his parents got married his mom- then a full time kindergarten teacher, now part time- earned more than his dad who was a public defender. But he worked hard and he became a judge about ten years ago. Plus, there was some compensation from the accident given that it was a company truck that hit them (Quinn gets the feeling it must have been a big company, like Walmart or something, but she doesn't ask, it doesn't seem like a topic Artie wants to talk about).

She takes in all of the musical instruments lining the back wall and asks, "You play all of these?"

"I play most of them a little," Artie answers modestly, "It's my brother that played the piano though- he taught me a little just like I taught him some guitar. But mostly I just play the guitar and base. We just have the drums in case anyone comes over- wouldn't want to have someone haul their own over. Plus I'd like to learn."

Artie's mom interrupts then, she brought down a snack- oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and milk.

The interruption having derailed their conversation, they finally making it to discussing what they're going to duet. Artie quickly confides that he does indeed want the song to make a statement to Tina, something about how he regrets his reaction to her secret, if that's okay with Quinn (which it is). They do this for well over an hour, going through song after song using his computer, before Artie finally sighs in frustration and declares, "None of these are right. I mean, sure I think the two of us doing "OMG," "Nothing On You," or "Just the Way You Are" would be particularly entertaining and just like a lot of other songs they're sweet. What person wouldn't like a nice song with romantic vibes sung for them? But they're not right." He shakes his head a little, seeming frustrated, and realizes, "I want it to fit our situation, to be me and Tina, and not just some cute song."

It takes some creativity, and even more time, but thanks to a video Artie once saw of Snow Patrol covering a song, they got the song settled, with alterations made, and it divided up to qualify as a duet. Artie thought that they sounded good singing the song- especially the way he decided they should do it, acoustic. But after they finished a very successful run-through, something nagged at him. He worried, "I'm not sure that this song says we're taking Mr. Schue's assignment seriously."

That had occurred to Quinn as well right after he first played it for her, but it seemed to fit what Artie wanted to say to Tina nearly perfectly so she didn't want to mention that. Other people could take the assignment seriously, they could be the exception. But now that he saw it, she wasn't going to lie. She offers, "Yeah, it wouldn't be the best song for competition, which seemed to be what Mr. Schue wanted us to do- find something appropriate for the competition." She considers, "We could always just do two songs. One that does what Mr. Schue wanted us to, and then your song for Tina."

Artie hesitates, but suggests, "Maybe the other song could express…anything you want to, if you want."

"No, something generic is fine," she declines and tries to move on quickly. She didn't have anything to express, nothing she was certain of or wanted to deal with right now. There were more important things she had to do anyway (which reminded her, she was supposed to make a list of stuff she needed to discuss with Ms. Pillsbury tonight). She goes back to the sweet songs they had gone through that didn't fit and Artie claims he'd like to do something more up-beat, but not change the aesthetic (he really thought a big band wouldn't suit the pairing of their voices). Deciding on their second song doesn't take nearly as long. As his mom calls them up for dinner, they also decide that they'll practice separately and then together during lunch on Thursday and ask to perform Friday after school (they don't have a meeting that day, but Mr. Schue frequently calls brief ones all the time to let someone perform).

Quinn meets Artie's dad- Tom. He greets her just as kindly as his wife had- shaking her hand, smiling, and not looking at her stomach. She's had a lot of practice at making polite conversation with strangers and on top of the people she's with actually being very nice, it's a skill that puts her at ease throughout dinner.

Artie's parents are smart enough not to ask her many questions about herself- they avoid the obvious bad topics. Though their avoidance wasn't the same as it always was in her parents house. Her parents never spoke of anything unpleasant-ever. But her parents did so because they didn't want to deal with it. It was clear that Artie's family avoided certain topics because they didn't want to make her feel bad, they wanted her to have an enjoyable night. It was in the way they talked to her happily about many things, distracting her from the things that usually consumed and worried her mind. They were such a nice family (she hoped someday she would be lucky enough to know what it was like to be apart of one of those- though she highly doubted it).

They sat at the table a while past dinner, simply talking. She learned about Tom's job and some of the more ridiculous cases he'd ever had before him (she was pretty sure one of the cases was about Ms. Sylvester- a woman arrested for assaulting someone verbally certainly sounded like her). She learned that Artie's brother- Malcolm- was at Georgetown and wanted to be a photojournalist. He had even gone to Africa the summer before his senior year of high school on some sort of volunteer/educational expedition and returned with albums of photos they proudly showed Quinn after dinner. And Mary was actually working at Quinn's old elementary school now- started back just two years ago. It turned out that a lot of Quinn's old teachers were still there and she enjoyed hearing a new perspective on them (learning about their personal lives).

It got late surprisingly quick and with homework and the task of coming up with all the things she'd need to talk to Ms. Pillsbury about tomorrow, Quinn had to leave. She tried to talk them into letting her take a cab, but Tom insisted he'd drive her. She doesn't tell him where to take her until they're in the car. He seems surprised and concerned when she tells him, but he doesn't ask questions.

Silence drawls on for a bit, but Tom finally speaks up. He offers softly, "Quinn, Artie's mentioned what's been going on in your life lately."

Quinn's eyes turned down, head tilted toward the floor. (Shamefully.)

"As a parent, I can't tell you how…livid it makes me to hear what your parents are putting you through. I've heard about them, naturally, and I know they're Christian, but this- this is the kind of thing that gives Christianity a bad name," he continues. He sighs and offers, "Sorry. I didn't mean to put them down like that. I just…I wanted to let you know that our family goes to the Christian church on Center street and if you need a place to go, as I imagine you lost your church when they…, you're welcome at our church. We can pick you up and you can come with us even."

That was not what Quinn was expecting when he started talking. She appreciated his outrage about her parents and agreed with it (mostly- she also sometimes felt like she forced them into it, getting pregnant and all). As nice of an offer as it was, Quinn hadn't been sure if she'd go to church lately even if she could step foot in her church. She still wore her cross, every day, but…(where was God when her parents abandoned her? Where was he when she needed him most? All the times she's needed to be saved lately?). She smiles and responds, "Thank you for the offer. I'm not sure if…if I can go through with something like that right now. But I'll keep it in mind for when I feel up to it."

"Good," Tom concludes with a smile, not pushing. He adds on as he pulls up to the curb in front of the hotel, "You can also call or come over any time you need anything. A place to stay included."

She smiles again (tears up a little because other people seemed to find it so easy to offer her something her own parents refused her) and says genuinely, "Thank you."

He nods in acknowledgement and parks the car. He insists on walking her up to her room (he's a judge- he hears the sort of things that can happen to people in between a front door and their room all the time). He also reminds her to keep her door locked before offering his hand again and wishing her a good night.

Quinn thanks him again, for everything, and they part. She writes a thank you to Artie's mom immediately (because it was polite and they did more for her in their simple acceptance tonight than they could possibly understand) and puts it in her bag so she can give it to Artie tomorrow. Quinn makes quick work of her homework and tires to hurry through her task of coming up with everything she needs to talk to Ms. Pillsbury about (she hopes that by rushing through it all the things won't terrify her as much).

Finally, later than she'd like, Quinn finds herself in bed and trying to fall asleep. It had been a surprisingly good day considering everything. She didn't get to resolving any of the pressing issues she really needs to start making decisions about (like where she's going to live next week, how she's going to support herself financially, what she's going to do about the baby, etc.). Yet she got to spend hours with people who didn't look at her like she's guilty of something horrible and didn't pity her (which always made her feel pathetic) either. They simply let her be and she really needed that right now. She falls asleep thinking of how glad she was that she accepted Artie's offer to be his partner.

-o-o-o-

Puck's Tuesday afternoon pretty much went just as badly as his Monday afternoon.

It started off with glee practice and Mr. Schue issuing that sappy assignment. At least he had an out with it. And he was glad to see, on his way out of the choir room, that Artie was talking to Quinn and maybe that meant that she'd get to work with someone. She was being shunned from enough people right now, he was glad someone in glee was nice enough to make sure that didn't happen there too.

He however, was perfectly okay doing the list and not working with anyone. He did, however, need to wait around for the people who were working together to leave though. Quinn hadn't even glanced his way again today and she definitely hadn't talked to him so he still didn't know where she was staying. That was something he wasn't willing to wait on anymore. But he didn't want to push her, didn't want to do anything she wasn't going to like because the plan was still to try and prove he was someone she wanted around and angering her wasn't good for that mission. So he wasn't waiting for Quinn to finish with Artie, he was waiting for Kurt to finish with Mercedes.

He hangs out around the corner from the choir room and Quinn and Artie are the first of the pairings to come out. They head in the same direction, still talking, apparently leaving together. About ten minutes later, Kurt and Mercedes came out and luckily they parted ways at the door. Kurt heads for his locker, which is practically just across from the choir room and stops there. Puck startles him when he approaches and demands, "Hummel (he didn't think his usual names for the kid were appropriate here), tell me where Quinn is staying. I know you know. You've been driving her to school."

Kurt sighs and takes his time sorting his books and shutting his locker before turning to the normally intimidating Puck. He refuses simply, "No."

Puck bristles and threatens, trying to come off menacing with a much-used glare, "Tell me or I'll throw you in the dumpster. And this time I'll lock you in it."

Kurt simply stands there, facing him, keeping his mouth shut and showing that he is not afraid (though honestly he's a little afraid).

Puck's fist clench, jaw tightens. He wants to hit something. He can't believe the kid's not going to tell him. What happened to his reputation as a bully? Didn't anyone respect that anymore? He growls a little in frustration before he snaps and rants, "Look. She's having_ my_ baby. And she's all alone right now and I don't…like it. I need to know where she's staying." He adds on to preserve his usual demeanor, thinking he may have been a little too honest, "So tell me or get beat up."

Kurt responds to the now twice made threat, "Then it looks like you're going to beat me up." He sees how angry and sad that seems to make Puck and finds himself explaining, "She told me not to tell anyone. And you made a good point about why you deserve to know. I don't know why she wouldn't want you to. If someone was willing to beat someone up to find out where I was I wouldn't keep it from them. But she said not to tell anyone and it seems like enough people have let her down lately, I'm not going to be one of them."

Crap. Puck, unable to restrain his frustration, punches the nearest locker with half his normal force (he was starting to learn how not to get himself hurt).

"You missed?" Kurt informs him, thinking the punch was meant for him (though he knew that normally Puck was much better at hitting the things he intended to).

"I wasn't trying to hit you," Puck grits out. He lets out a ragged sigh and says honestly, "I wasn't actually going to beat you up. Everyone in glee would really hate me if I did." He hesitates, but it does deserve to be said, so Puck powers through, "And you're right." He leaves it at that. He didn't want anyone else in Quinn's life letting her down either and if he made Kurt tell him where she was then he'd be making Kurt into another one of those people (unreliable and untrustworthy just like him).

"Oh," Kurt responds quietly. He knew he had a good point, but he didn't expect Puck to see that. He had seen some things that made him suspect things would be this way, but now, given how Puck saw rationale so easily, he was pretty sure he was right in thinking that there was more to Puck than he ever thought (especially concerning Quinn).

Kurt is further convinced of his latest train of thought as Puck looks toward the floor and runs a hand over the back of his Mohawk as he directs, "Make sure she has a coat with her when you pick her up in the mornings. It's getting cooler out and she gets cold easily anyway."

Puck walks away then. He makes sure to keep his pace normal even though he sort of feels like running. He didn't want to actually…share that much with Kurt, but Quinn had been coming to school without her coat and that was just stupid. He tries to shake off this feeling he has because he knows that if he's going to prove to Quinn that he's good enough for the both of them, he's going to have to get used to being real with a lot more people instead of always playing the less than intelligent bully.

Kurt smiles to himself as he makes his way to his car. It seemed like things were more complicated than he initially figured, which in turn seemed like it was going to make things a lot more interesting.

Puck goes home to find himself all alone for a while longer tonight- his sister at dance and his mom at her psychiatrist. He feels defeated, just like he has every day since he started on this mission. Normally he'd give up because it had gotten hard. But this wasn't something he was willing to give up on. He just wished he knew what he should do.

He grabs something to eat and tries to get this list of duet-able songs for glee over with, but after one Aerosmith suggestion ("Angel") he gets stuck. He's just about to get started on his homework like he has been the past few nights when there's a knock at his door.

"Your mom home?" Santana demands, dispensing with pleasantries.

"No."

"Your sister?"

"No," Puck responds and as soon as he does Santana invites herself in.

She's still in her cheer uniform and doesn't appear to have anything with her but her car keys. She goes in and sits in his living room, he follows curiously. "What's going on?" he asks, because despite how long they've known each other she doesn't just stop by to hang out.

She sighs as she sits down on his couch and answers, "My dad's pissed. So I'm avoiding him until he cools down or forgets about it. And Brittany's family is busy- it's her sister's birthday or something."

"What'd you do?" he asks knowingly.

"He found condoms in my purse," Santana responds. She defends, "And I tried to tell him that at least I have condoms and I'm smart enough to use them." She gives him a pointed look as she continues, "Unlike some people."

He ignores the comment (especially since she was right) and simply tells her, "The remote's on the table." He returns to his place at the kitchen table with his homework piled up. He didn't have to say she could stay, she knew she could. They'd done this before. Her dad wasn't violent or a drunk or anything, but when she did something to piss him off she preferred to stay out of his way for a while, let him cool down, so her punishment would be less (because if she were to face him when he was angry for more than the minute that she had this time, she knows she'd just end up arguing with him and making him angrier). So when she needed a place to go, sometimes she'd come to him. They'd known each other since the fourth grade, been friends sixth, it was just easier to come to him, she wouldn't have to explain anything to him.

After about an hour of watching TV, Santana finds herself bored and decides to do what she usually does when she's bored around an at least moderately attractive person. She heads for the kitchen and helps herself to a pop as she suggests to Puck who appears to be reading the paper, "I'm bored. You wanna have sex?"

"No," he responds simply and continues his search of the classifieds for a job. He may have just applied a bunch of places, but since none of them were hiring he figured he still needed to keep on top of who was so he could immediately apply for anything he's qualified for.

She comes around the back of the chair he's sitting in, takes a closer look at what he's reading, as she tries again, "Wanna fool around?"

"No," he says with a tired sigh.

She goes around the table so she's facing him and checks, "Those no's just for right now or is that the way it's going to be from now on?" She didn't love him. She didn't even believe in love. But that didn't mean that she didn't want him in her life. Besides her own family, who she didn't get along with, he was the only person she'd had in her life for more than a couple of years. She didn't want to lose him from her life (especially not in the context he'd been in her life in the last couple of years because "sex buddy" was the context she was most comfortable with for any person in her life). But she wasn't stupid. She could see what was going on with him. So she wanted to know for sure that what they were was definitely over.

"It's the way it's going to be from now on," he tells her, glancing up at her. He knew she probably wasn't going to like that. She was also probably thinking he was an idiot for what she clearly knew he wanted (just Quinn). Waiting for her to call him on being a sap or something, he turns back to the classifieds.

She'd call him an idiot for thinking a high school relationship was the be all, end all, but she's sure he'll figure it out for himself. While she preferred their relationship to be all about sex rather than actual friendship, she found herself unable to resist commenting with a dumbfounded glare to him, "Are you looking for a job? In the classifieds? What decade do you think you're living in? And what economy? You're not going to find anything _you _can do in there."

He'd ask why but in reading the classifieds for a while now and barely coming up with anything to apply for, he knows she has a point even if he doesn't understand how she figured that out. Since he doesn't care about how she made that conclusion, he asks, "Then what should I do?"

"Those jobs are for people with skills, or qualifications, or a work history that doesn't consist of vulgar acts that verge on assault or public endangerment," Santana informs him, "If you're going to find someone willing to hire you, with your lack of anything that qualifies you for a job, then you're going to need to have someone do you a favor by hiring you. Ask everyone you know, see if they can help you out."

"How about your dad? Think he can get me a job with the city like him?" Puck jokes.

"Chances of that happening were slim even before he caught us in my bed last year," Santana responds. Then, because helping so isn't one of her usual activities, she decides that she's provided enough advice for one day (or the rest of the year) and heads back to the living room to watch TV for thirty more minutes before she decides to leave because Mrs. Puckerman will be returning and that woman doesn't seem to like her (not that she cares).

Despite the fact that Puck knows Santana well enough to know that if she's helping someone, then she usually has ulterior motives, he figures she has a good point (plus he doesn't really think she'd screw him over with bad advice- not intentionally). So when his mom gets home he tells her about it and she says she'll start asking around, see if anyone can find him a job.

Later that night as he's finishing his homework and more extra credit his mp3 player shuffles to a Bob Dylan song, reminding him of someone else he can ask for advice/help besides a couple of adults at school. Ever so slightly, things are looking up by the end of Tuesday night.

-o-o-o-

Wednesday after school was quite productive for both Quinn and Puck.

Quinn's day so far had been a mix of good and bad.

The good:

-Principal Figgins let her know that he can make her the substitute coach for the Cheerios for the Saturday practice and for the practices next week. It paid thirty-five dollars an hour and she would work for three hours on six days. It was a lot more money than she could earn at any other job so she was very grateful for it even if it wouldn't be enough money to solve any of her problems and it wasn't a long term fix to her unemployment issue.

-Artie's mom sent cookies with him to give to her. They were delicious.

The bad:

-Everyone still either whispered about her (with a snickering tone) or ignored her in the hallways and in classes.

-It seemed to be another day (just like the two previous) where she found herself frequently crossing paths with Puck. He was doing just what she asked him to- respecting that she was doing this alone. But every time she saw him she started to think about whether or not she really wanted to do this alone or if she should have given him another chance when he sat by her in the hallway and promised that they could be a family. And she didn't want to wonder about that. She had enough worries on her mind, she didn't need more stress. This was supposed to be the less stressful path.

The odd:

-Kurt made her go back to her room to get a coat this morning. He refused to drive to school until she had gone back in and gotten it.

Now for the part of her day that had the potential to be a mix of good, bad, and odd: meeting with Ms. Pillsbury to discuss her future (and her present a lot too).

Her list of things to discuss with Ms. Pillsbury included:

How the rest of the school year would go

How she could possibly still go to college without any help from her parents

How to get Medicaid

If there was any kind of government assistance she could qualify for to help her survive financially (both if she keeps the baby and if she doesn't)

Whether or not she should get herself emancipated

If Ms. Pillsbury knew of any good jobs

Ms. Pillsbury had come prepared and was ready with answers and then some. She lets Quinn know that since she's not due until nearly mid-June and school gets out June 5th, she should be able to complete the school year normally. If she goes into labor early, she'll likely only miss her finals, which they can arrange for her to make up (though they'd likely need to be taken within two weeks of the end of the school year). The next semester doesn't have to go as planned though. Ms. Pillsbury did some research and she informs Quinn, "Based on the fact that you're in the top two percent of your class academically and seem to have a wide range of extra curricular to add to your college applications, I figured that college was something you wanted in your future. So, knowing that it's going to be financially difficult for you, I did some digging and it turns out that the University of Findlay will let local high schools like ours enroll students in courses- those students don't have to pay, the school pays. So any classes you could manage to take next year could be paid for- you could acquire basically free credits for college. On top of your AP credits I'd think that you'd have a years worth of college credits or more by the time you graduate next year."

"Really? That sounds too good to be true," Quinn questions disbelievingly.

"Well, it won't be easy," Ms. Pillsbury admits, "You'd be best off dropping your Spanish class for next semester. You already have enough language credits to qualify for graduation and I can get you into an economics class. Then you'd take AP Government next fall as planned. Also, you'll have enough math, PE, and extra curricular credits to qualify for graduation too so you won't need to take any of those classes here next year. You do need to take at least two classes here each semester to qualify to take classes at Findlay and to remain in the glee club though. Which shouldn't be a problem because you'll have AP English II and whatever AP science course you were planning on taking. Then you can take whatever you want at Findlay- I'd recommend anything that could serve as a general education course. Also, you can take as few as one and as many as three courses- they won't let you take the four to five full load. You can decide how many you want to take as late as next August- so you can accommodate whatever your…situation is going to be like." She smiles reassuringly and offers, "I know it sounds like it'll be a lot of work and it will be. But I'm very confident that you'll be able to handle it."

A bunch of college credits that she doesn't have to pay to get is a better opportunity than Quinn was ever expecting to find so she's not going to pass it up. She decides right then and tells Ms. Pillsbury to go ahead and drop her from Spanish, sign her up for economics next term, and get whatever she needs to, to get enrolled in this program with Findlay.

After that they transition into the money stuff. Ms. Pillsbury provides her with a very heavy packet of information on scholarships she could qualify for, which schools are cheaper, which locations would be cheaper to live in, etc. Also, how much federal assistance she could get for school won't change whether she's emancipated or not. No matter what, they'd take her parents income into account and thanks to their lofty earnings it's unlikely she'd get any money that way. But Ms. Pillsbury assures her that she'd qualify for all of the many scholarships she recommended and if she applied for all of them she'd find plenty of money for school. Plus there's always loans and she'd have ample time to pay them back.

Ms. Pillsbury had an application for Medicaid and helped Quinn fill it out. She also called and made her an appointment with the local WIC office. She offered to go to the appointment with Quinn, but Quinn declined from taking up any more of her time. Besides the people who worked there were probably used to girls in her situation coming in and knew exactly how to help them get set up with the program.

As far as other government assistance, what she could apply for depended on what she decided to do (about the baby- it didn't get said, but it's what was meant). They move on quickly (Ms. Pillsbury promising to email her links web pages that laid out her options either way), because it's clear that Quinn doesn't have any idea what she wants to do there.

Unfortunately Ms. Pillsbury didn't know of a single open job. However, she did recommend keeping a close eye on the Starbucks' in the area because they had mostly part time jobs, paid well, and came with health insurance for those part time jobs. Sure Quinn would be getting the Medicaid (hopefully), but ideally she'd want to get off that at some point and this would be a good job that would allow for that.

Also, Ms. Pillsbury informs her that if she keeps the baby their school is required to offer her childcare services on campus. No one has ever taken them up on that, but she does have that right. She could also elect to go to their district's continuation school (which is where most of the pregnant girls end up- that's why they seem so scarce around campus), but Ms. Pillsbury really thinks that that would damage her chances of getting into college (they didn't offer AP classes or the Findlay program). And Ms. Pillsbury offers that if Quinn needs/wants her to look into anything regarding adoption or more ways to support the baby if she keeps it, just let her know.

Quinn's not ready for that discussion yet though. She needs to get her own life in order before she can really consider her possibilities for the baby. So she thanks Ms. Pillsbury for all of her help and her time and promises she'll come back whenever she has more concerns or needs more help. She walks back to the hotel, thoughts of decisions and the future weighing on her mind.

She tries to distract herself with homework the rest of the afternoon and evening, but her mind keeps wandering back to thinking about the future and how she knows she needs to make a decision. When these thoughts come up she tries to force them in the direction of thinking about _her_ future, which took an optimistic turn today when she learned about how she could earn college credits without paying for them. But then she wonders if when she's doing that, earning college credits at the University of Findlay while completing her senior year of high school, she'll be a mother to a little girl or someone who had a little girl being raised by a different mother.

Trying to brush those thoughts away, Quinn decides to pick up take-out from a near by Chinese restaurant for dinner. She still has food in her room's mini-fridge, but she hoped that going out would clear her mind, distract her. It doesn't help the entire time she's out, not until she gets back to her room, juggling food and searching for her key, that she finds an effective distraction.

There was a man a couple of doors down with a much younger, giggling girl in his arms. Quinn could only see him from behind and he was tall, relatively fit, and had blonde hair and reddish-tan skin. For a brief second she thought it could be her dad. It wasn't, he turned just enough for her to confirm that. But as she got her door open and went inside she realized that it could have easily actually been her dad. She knew he cheated- as did her mom and her sister. No one else besides the three of them would have thought that about him though, but… maybe that could change. Or maybe it wasn't the only thing he did that he wouldn't want other people knowing about.

She calls her sister immediately and gets right to the point asking, "Do you know the combination to dad's safe? And the next time him and mom definitely aren't going to be home for a while?"

She may just have figured out a way to fix at least some of her problems. She just hopes she can pull it off.

-o-o-o-

Oddly, Kurt sat next to Puck today in their geometry class. Puck honestly hadn't realized Kurt was in that class (which makes sense since he just started actually coming to it consistently this week). He just sits there, doing his work like Puck is doing for a change, for most of the period until eventually he interrupts Puck from paying attention and volunteers, "I live at 215 Lakewood."

Uh…Puck's not sure what to do with that. He considers, "If that's an attempt to hit on me you should know, one, you're lucky I don't hit you for it, and two, it's a really bad pick-up attempt."

Kurt looks at him like he's an idiot. He rolls his eyes and tells him, "I'm not trying to hit on you. Relax. You're not my type." He sighs and explains, "I go to a certain place every morning, some place you want to know, and if you know where I'm leaving from wouldn't it be easy to just follow me and figure it out?" He sees understanding cross Puck's features and adds on, "And you didn't get any of this from me. If you tell her how you figured it out, make something up so she doesn't know I did this. Something like you knew where I lived from when you put all my lawn furniture on my roof."

"I wasn't involved in that," Puck says honestly. He had wanted to be at the time, it sounded like fun. But he knew she knew he hadn't done that because she ran in the same circle of people and they all knew who was really responsible. "I know the guys who did it though and they would tell me what house they did that to without thinking anything of it. It's a good idea. Thanks."

Kurt nods, and warns, "Don't make me sorry I did this."

Puck doesn't want to care whether or not he makes Kurt regret doing anything, but the kid was doing something nice for him here and he really needed it. So he offers, "I won't. I just want to know where she is." He adds, even quieter even though they'd been whispering, just barely loud enough to even be picked up by Kurt, "Just want to know she's okay."

Kurt returns to trying to pay attention to their teacher feeling good about what he just did. He's fairly sure he made the right call.

Puck leaves school that afternoon feeling better than he has in days. Not only is he finally going to learn where Quinn's been tomorrow morning, but he's going to visit someone who he's pretty sure will be able to help him in everything he's trying to do.

During lunch he'd tried to call Foster's hoping Addie would happen to be there, but no one picked up. Now he was driving there and hoped she didn't mind when he knocked on her door. But when he got there, he was surprised to see a light on inside of the bar and figured he may not have to disturb her at home after all. He knocks on the door to the bar before trying the handle and pulling it open.

He only gets one step inside before he sees Addie come out from the kitchen, surprise written all over her face. "Puck!" she exclaims happily. She wipes her hands on the dishtowel in her hands and comes over to him and gives him a hug. "It's so good to see you," she say as she pulls back.

"Yeah, you too," he returns (and he wishes it were under better circumstances).

She goes around the bar, continuing in her task of wiping dust off of things as she tells him, "This is a nice surprise. Were you just driving out here today and stopped since the light was on?"

"I wish that was it," he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets and staying rooted in his spot near the door (a place he could easily run from if he feels the need). He confesses, "I was actually coming out here to see you."

"Oh," Addie comments, seeming surprised but delighted.

"I kind of have a…situation I thought you may be able to help me with," Puck continues.

By the way he looks (guilty, a bit scared, a bit nervous), Addie has a feeling that this is not going to be the friendly chat she initially expected. She smiles and tells him, "Well, take a seat and tell me all about your situation and I'll do whatever I can."

Puck does as she said and sits on one of the stools in front of the bar, in front of Addie. He runs a finger nervously along some of the scratches in the bar's surface, eyes glued to it rather than looking at Addie as he reveals evenly, "Quinn's pregnant."

Addie had heard her fair share of shocking things in her life. With four kids who's revealed secrets had ranged from "I got my tongue pierced, while drunk, pulled it out and now it may be infected" to "I got married on that trip to Vegas-and divorced about seven hours later" and having been the one to reveal a few shocking things to people herself, Addie was excellent at not letting shock get to her. She takes a deep breath, lets the surprise go, and asks, "It's yours?"

"Yeah," Puck confirms knowing how that didn't make complete sense. Her and Foster may have been the only two people to know that they were ever, sort of, together, but they also knew that ended quickly and that Quinn dated his best friend.

Addie grabs a glass and fills it up with pop. She places it before him and comes around the bar to sit next to him. She tells him, "Okay, tell me everything."

He nearly does tell her everything. More than he told his mom since Addie knew a bit more to start with and would understand. He doesn't mention how their night together came right after the last time they saw her, when they found out Foster died. He didn't want to bring that up even though he knows that when he told her how far along Quinn was she'd be able to do the math.

He didn't mean to give her more details about _that_ night. But then Addie questioned, "Didn't Fos give you his speech about the importance of contraception? Or as he used to call it, his "no love without a glove" speech?" Foster had actually (it was a pretty awkward experience), but he didn't remember that or anything else then. As he responded to Addie, sometimes he just forgets that anything else exists besides Quinn and, unfortunately, that was one of those moments.

Puck recaps everything for Addie, including his idiocy and regrets, right up through the part where Finn finds out the truth and he tries again with Quinn and she asks for him to respect that she's doing this alone.

"Well honey," Addie begins, her brow creasing in confusion, "I know you said why you did that…sexting with that other girl and everything, but I'm confused. What is it you want?"

"Quinn," he answers immediately. Only, it's more complicated than that now, "I want to be with Quinn. I mean, the idea of trying to be with just one girl used to seem impossible, and kind of…scary, but now I've lost her a couple of times- that one time on purpose- and I know that that's worse than anything else. So I want us to be together. Or if not together at least in this whole thing together. As scared shitless as I am, I want the baby because being a family with Quinn, being with Quinn for good, sounds like an awesome future. But I know what a baby will do to Quinn's future. I know how bad it's already been for everything Quinn had and wants. I don't want to ruin her life any more than I already have. I don't want to just push everything aside and let her think that I don't care so she has a shot at getting the life she wants though either. That doesn't seem fair to either one of us. So I want her to know…that I can do anything she wants, that I will do everything she needs me to, I just want to be involved in what happens to the baby, have a say in the decision."

Addie takes a second to process everything he said. She considers how to go about this to make him understand some of the things he said. She asks, "What you want, for your life, has changed throughout this whole thing, right? Like between when you first started coming here and now your ideal future has changed?"

"Hell yeah," Puck responds, "before all this I was set on avoiding ever being with just one girl, a relationship. Didn't want to risk turning into my dad. He left us and I didn't want to have anyone around that I could do that to." He reflects, rolling the glass of pop Addie had given him, half empty now, between his hands, "But then after I gave her a reason to hate me again, when I tried to give her up to make sure she got the future she wanted, I realized I can't be my dad, ever. I could do things sort of like him- that whole giving her up was sort of being like him in that it was a real dumbass move. But I can't be my dad because I love Quinn and I want us and my dad never felt that way about our family, that's why he ran. And even if I end up doing stupid stuff that ruins us, I want Quinn too much to run so I'm never going to be my dad." It was a big deal for Puck, realizing that. He may constantly screw things up in his life and maybe that would always be true, but he wasn't his dad. Just knowing that made him a lot more optimistic for the person he thought he could be and the life he thought he could have.

Just because Puck slipped that certain L-word in there, all casual like, didn't mean that Addie didn't catch it. She wished Foster was here to hear all this. He always said that Puck was going to fall in love with Quinn, they were perfect for each other and just needed time to realize it- and that was why she shouldn't meddle and just let it happen. She wants to comment on the changes Puck's made, the different man he seems to be now, but she had a point to make first. She tells him, "See, what you want for your life has changed, drastically, in the last few months thanks to what's happened. The same could be true for Quinn. The future you thought she wanted that you think the baby will ruin, may not be the future she wants now."

"So you're saying that maybe what she really wants for the future changed too? Maybe she wants to keep the baby, have a family now?" Puck asks, not particularly hopeful since Quinn hadn't spoken to him in days so he really didn't think that was the case.

"Not exactly," Addie says pensively, "if she's not with you then she hasn't realized she wants to be. And maybe that won't be what she decides she wants." She shakes her head a little and starts over, trying to clarify, "When she found out she was pregnant, when her parents kicked her out, Quinn's possibilities for her future changed- I know, I've been there. They made her previous dreams less possible, though she can still have a great life, she just has to decide what a 'dream future' would be for her now. From the way you talk, I don't think she's figured that out yet, which I wouldn't expect her to considering how much she's had to deal with. But that will work in your favor because it means you can show her the possible futures she has open to her and hope she wants the one you do."

Okay, that sounded pretty good, made sense. Quinn didn't know that he was a good option for her future, given his track record, so if he proved that he was maybe she'd see that she could pick him. It sounded kind of like what he had already thought. He asks using Addie's words, "So what do I do to show her, her possible futures?"

Addie smiles at him knowingly and returns, "Since you came here looking for advice I think you already have a pretty good idea of what you need to do to prove that you could be a good man for her, for a family."

"I know I need a job," Puck offers and asks, "and I'm not having much luck just filling out applications so I was hoping you may know someone who's hiring."

"Well, I don't know of jobs exactly, but I know people," Addie begins. She breaks it down for him, "What you need is a job that will teach you a skill- so you have something to fall back on should any job ever not work out. Foster learned that lesson quick. He wasn't good at keeping a job, never fit anywhere except here, but the fact that he'd worked for a plumber and a general contractor and a mechanic and a farmer gave him enough job skills to never really be out of work because it made finding jobs easier. I have some regulars who worked in jobs like that or had their own businesses of those sort. Let's see… who would most be likely to take you on?" Adie considers it for a few minutes. She gets out a pad of paper and a pen from her apron and writes down names (a reminder to herself of who to call) as she considers, "Tom has a mechanic business- works on semi trucks. I haven't seen him in a while, but I think his business is doing okay so he may be willing to take you on. Then there's Neal, he's a truck driver, which wouldn't be a very good job for you and I'm not even sure you're old enough to do it, but he knows a lot of people in different fields so I'll give him a call. Oh, and Hank. Hank would be perfect! He was just here, you missed him by about ten minutes. He and Foster worked together way back right after we just had our first son. Hank and his wife, June, were a lot like us- young and with a baby. They'd just both graduated high school and June had a baby girl three months later. I worked with her at this bakery in town that was nice enough to hire girls in our 'situation' and Foster worked with Hank. And even though Foster quickly left his job with Hank and both June and I left the bakery, we've been friends ever since."

Addie seemed to be caught up in memories, which Puck didn't want to interrupt, but she'd kind of left out a bit of really important information. He asks tentatively, "What does he do though?"

"Oh," Addie says, remembering herself, "he's a general contractor. That's the job he had with Foster, working for one, and he stuck with it, became really good and started his own company for it a few decades back. We've been talking a lot lately because Foster and Hank made the same agreement June and I had- if one of us dies, we look out for the spouse left behind. June died about eight years ago- breast cancer. We spent a lot of time with him after that and now that Foster's gone Hank's been stopping in every day to check on me. And as I had him here earlier to discuss what I could possibly do with this place now, he mentioned how he's lost two of his men recently. One of them had a wife who got a better job somewhere else so they moved and the other moved to take care of a sick parent. I know business hasn't been fantastic, given the economy in all, but I think he was looking to replace them at some point so I'll tell him about you next time I see him, which should probably be tomorrow."

"Thank you," Puck says gratefully. He'll have to google "general contractor" when he gets home because he's honestly not too sure what that means, but he needs a job so he's not planning on being picky about it. There was something in all of Addie's description of her friend that stuck out to him though, "You're going to do something new with this place now?"

"Yeah," she looks around, a bit wistfully, and explains, "there are so many memories here, good and bad. Foster and I spent so much time here. It just feels like…a tomb of memories now and I don't want it to feel like that, not sure I could stand it being that way forever. He's with me always anyway, I don't need the place to look so much like all these moments of our lives. I don't think he'd want me here with it like this anyway. This place was us, and there isn't an us here in it anymore. Now there's just me so it's time to start a new chapter, make something new. I'm not quite ready for that yet so I haven't decided what I'm going to do with this place, but it's going to be great…I'm sure." She tried to sound certain, but she wasn't. She couldn't stay in this place that was them. It didn't feel right to be here without Foster, to try and continue his bar without him here. And she couldn't just be retired- she'd tried that before, didn't suit her (especially now, when she was alone). So she needed a project, like a new business, so she was going to come up with one, definitely. She clears her throat and distracts herself from thoughts of what's (who's) missing from her life now by returning to the reasons Puck was here in the first place. She asks, "So what else are you going to do besides get a job?"

He sighs and considers, "I started trying to do better in school. And I'm definitely not going to…do anything with another girl. So with the job that should say that I can be responsible and faithful, right? But I don't know what else to do to prove that I want her and our baby."

"It sounds like you're on the right path," Addie assures. He seems like he's looking for a specific act, something he could just do and it would result in what he wants Quinn to realize, but Addie knows from experience that relationships just don't work that way. She divulges, "It's not so much what you do as in one thing. It'd be a good idea to choose to do something that proves what kind of man you are every chance you get, but having her see who you are takes more than just one thing. What kept me with Foster even when I was so mad at him for something that I wanted him out of my life, was that he didn't care that I hated him, he never left me. It didn't matter if I was pissed at him for taking our one year old for a ride on his motorcycle with him, he stayed. And when things get rough, staying always seemed to matter more than anything else. So no matter what, as long as you don't stop trying to prove you're a good man for her, that you're there for her always, I think you'll be very successful in proving that you want her and your baby."

That was it? Just don't give up and do the right thing at every opportunity? Honestly, Puck was hoping for more specific advice. Something like buying her flowers would get him lots of points with her or something. And doing the right thing at every opportunity or not giving up could mean buying her flowers he supposed, but these things sounded like they'd take so much time and he was already so tired of this state they're in where they're not anything to each other. It was something he needed to hear though. As much as he could tell himself something like that in his head, he didn't really think he'd ever had good ideas or necessarily knew anything about girls so hearing Addie say he was on a good path was very reassuring.

He spends a few more minutes talking to her, exchanges phone numbers so she can call him if she finds out about a job and he can call her any time he needs anything, and leaves. Before he does, she insists that he give her number to Quinn in case she ever wants to talk too (having been through the same thing herself, she could really help her out). He had been planning on stopping by her hotel tomorrow afternoon (after finding out which one it is tomorrow morning) and now with Addie's insistence he has a good excuse for doing so. He's more grateful to Addie, for everything, than he can possibly convey (but he hopes he can figure out a way to show his appreciation- maybe she'd like to come to Hanukah with his family).

-o-o-o-

Thursday goes normally enough for Quinn, but she's antsy through the whole day anyway. Last night, she came up with a plan and today she was going to go to her parents house while her sister assured her they said they had a doubles match with the Taylor's at the club and break into her dad's safe. As much as they deserve what she's going to do (what she hopes she's going to do depending on what she finds), she's been feeling uneasy about the idea all day. (But maybe the jitteriness is just from the fact that today she's going to have to set foot in the home she was thrown out of.)

She had asked Kurt for a ride for after school on the way to school this morning and he readily agreed. She didn't mention where she'll be having him drop her off, but she knows that he'll probably have questions about it. They're not exactly friends though (friendly, not friends) so maybe he wouldn't pry. Either way she needs him to give her a ride there because she's trying to save money and her parents house is pretty far from the hotel so she should take any opportunity to avoid a cab fare.

She's going to go there right after the glee club meeting, which, with her nerves, feels like it's dragging on and on. Mr. Schue starts off with another rambling on why doing a duet would be such a good idea for regional's. Then Rachel and Finn are apparently already ready to perform their duet. Rachel spends about ten minutes explaining why she chose the song for them that she did ("Need You Now"- Lady Antebellum), ranting on and on about how a lot of people were fans of country (possibly the judges) and how that meant that they should be performing more country songs. Eventually, between Mr. Schue and Finn insisting that she'd made her point so they could move on to performing, they did perform the song. Of course they did it very well. Quinn thought there was something different about it though. Finn didn't seem as happy as he usually was to be singing with Rachel. She wondered if Finn not being happy with someone that used to seem to make him that way was her fault, because of what she did to him.

By the time glee club was over though, Quinn's nerves were back consuming her and drawing her away from her worries over Finn. Now, she was going to go to the place that used to be her home.

Kurt had been chatting with her on the way to the car, criticizing Rachel's song choice, but as soon as he's backing out he finally asks the question she had been expecting, "Back to the hotel?"

"No, actually," she tells him, "would you mind dropping me at my parents house?"

He gives her a long look as he stops at the end of the parking lot before the street. "Everything okay?" he asks.

"Yeah, I just have to pick something up," she lies. She adds on, since he seems concerned, "My parents won't even be there. I had my sister check."

He pulls out onto the road in the appropriate direction as he offers, "Well if you're just grabbing something I can wait for you, give you a ride to wherever you're going next."

She should have known he'd be that nice. She bites her lip and considers whether or not she should just tell him the truth. She didn't want to push people away, she wanted to have friends, and being honest with Kurt was probably a good start to forming a friendship with him. She decides to tell him the truth and explains how she's going there to look through her father's safe and explains why she's going to do that. He doesn't say anything until she's done explaining and when he does speak he simply says that it's a brilliant idea.

"Well now I have to stay," he tells her, "you could need a getaway driver."

It was possible that she could need some help. Jessica hadn't known the combination to the safe either, though they both came up with some guesses for what numbers could be used in it by their dad (his birthday, his high school football jersey number, his high school and college graduation years, etc.). If the whole safe thing ended up failing she could need help rifling through the rest of his office and a lookout wouldn't be a bad idea either. So she tells Kurt okay, he can come with her, she'd appreciate that. She then has him park a block away and follow her into sneaking into her house from the back because she wasn't sure if her parents' neighbors were on their side or hers and may report her presence there.

"Wow, it's like life styles of the rich and famous in here," Kurt comments as she leads him quickly to her dad's office. (She hoped that if she rushed to her destination she wouldn't notice the rest of the house, wouldn't miss it.)

She heads directly for the safe (behind a stack of file folders at the bottom of a bookshelf to the left of his desk), while she tells Kurt to go through anything he thinks could be useful.

Kurt goes for the computer. He sits down in the over stuffed office chair and comments, "Hmmm...a password. What would your dad be likely to have as his password?" He's typing as he asks and before she can answer he says, "Your last name apparently. That was awfully obvious of him, not to mention pretty stupid. What am I looking for?"

Quinn sighs. That was one part of this that she wasn't quite sure of. She was looking for anything bad, basically. She responds, unable to think of anything else, "I don't know, something about the business I guess."

"Which is?" Kurt asks. He knows her family is one of the wealthiest in town, but never knew where that came from.

"Fabray Realty Corporation," she answers. Her dad was a real estate developer. It was a family business handed down to him from his dad who got it from his dad and so on. Her family had once owned most of the land in town a long, long time ago and now, thanks to the business, they owned land and buildings all over their county and a few others. Land that they built on, rented, or sold for a profit.

She was sure that, given his willingness to cheat on his wife, her father probably wasn't opposed to doing other unsavory things. She figured marriage vows probably weren't the first or last thing he broke and if she could find something to indicate that he was breaking an actual law, well, she had something in mind she could do with that kind of information.

"He has porn in his internet history. That probably doesn't help though. What middle aged man doesn't have porn in his internet history?" Kurt comments as he continues to browse through the contents of the computer.

Quinn sighs in frustration. She was having absolutely no luck with any combination of any of the numbers her and her sister had come up with.

Kurt, on a whim, does a search on the computer and gets lucky. "Look at that," he reveals, "your dad has a file labeled 'safe combination."

"You looked for that? That's brilliant," Quinn compliments gratefully.

Kurt shrugs modestly and responds, "Well I thought a man dumb enough to have his last name as his password may just be lacking enough intelligence not to save the combination to his safe in some easily accessible place."

Kurt gives her the combination. As she twirls the combination around to the correct numbers, Quinn comments, "Sixty-eight, seventy, and two. I have no idea what those numbers would mean for my dad and highly doubt he'd pick random numbers, he'd never remember them, especially if he had to save these."

Kurt's brow furrows and he asks, "Does your dad happen to be an Ohio State Buckeye football fan?"

"A huge one. He went to school there, didn't make the team himself because he hurt his shoulder," Quinn answers as she pulls the safe open and starts going through the papers within it.

"Those numbers are the last three years they were national champions- 1968, 1970, and 2002," Kurt explains. Quinn glances around at him with a curious eyebrow raised and he knows what she's wondering. He offers, "My dad's a huge Buckeye fan too and sometimes I'm too bored not to listen when he talks sports with the guys at the garage or with my uncles."

Kurt surfs through the computer while Quinn goes through all the papers she found in the safe. When she's halfway through she asks Kurt to look around the house, out front, just to make sure it doesn't seem like anyone is coming.

After about fifteen minutes with the safe open, she finds everything she'll need to put her initial idea into action. It's not going to be pleasant, but she's limited on options right now.

Of course Kurt tries to pry what she found out of her the whole ride back to her hotel, but it's just in a teasing, playful manner because he understood what her plan was and how sharing wouldn't be right for it. By the time he's pulling up outside her hotel, she thinks they're talking like they're actually friends and she's really glad that he insisted on giving her morning rides, glad that he's willing to be her friend.

When Quinn enters the lobby of her hotel though, she finds someone waiting for her that she had been avoiding. (She found, upon seeing him, that she was still nervous. Only, the task that had been keeping her antsy all day was over now. This, being nervous now, was all because of who was sitting in the lobby.)

(Here's something you should know: Romantically, he's always chosen being alone; never spent much time with the same girl. Now that he's finally not choosing to be alone though, he's stuck there anyway. He hopes that that will change, but the next few days will only make him more uncertain about whether or not it ever will.)

* * *

**A/N: **I hope you enjoyed the chapter! There will be more to come soon in a chapter that's slightly less long and that will be followed by a massive chapter (or two moderate ones) and then chapters after that will take on a holiday feel- hopefully in time for the holidays (or sooner-ideally).

**Next chapter title: **_These are feelings too hard to measure_ from "Common Ground" by Neil Diamond. And if it looks familiar that's because it was going to be the title of chapter eight when chapter eight was going to cover everything that happens between chapters eight through eleven (or twelve). Since the original chapter eight was nearing two hundred pages, once divided up into these more manageable parts the original title had to be re-arranged to be applied to the part of the split it was most applicable for. If that doesn't make any sense, don't worry about it, I'm really rambling unnecessarily at this point.

Remember, I'm addicted to reviews- in a good way- and I'd really, really appreciate it if you feed my addiction. In other words, PLEASE REVIEW.

**Thank you for reading!**


	12. Chapter 10

**A/N: First, thank you to all of the wonderful readers who reviewed last chapter! You're all fantastic:)**

Second, I'm really unsure if I should be adding this chapter right now. The amount of reviews was down last chapter, but that was true of the two that preceded it as well. But, though hits for chapters had likewise been down for the last three chapters, the last one in particular was even lower. So I'm concerned that readers are possibly not caught up with all of the massive chapters. If that's the case, I'm so sorry to adding to the amount you have to catch up with by adding this chapter now, but for those of you who are caught up, I felt like you waited long enough for this chapter.

Third, remember how I mentioned that what I had originally planned for the events of chapter eight was being split into four chapters? Well, now it's going to be **five **chapters. What was going to be the fourth installment of what was originally chapter eight, was getting insanely long so I split it…and I'm not yet finished with that fifth part-still about ten/fifteen pages to go. But I have a decent feeling that I'll be able to stay ahead of updates despite how quickly I've been updating- don't hold me to that though, I'm notoriously wrong about these type of things.

Fourth, there are songs mentioned in this chapter, since some duets happen, and links to those songs can be found on my profile.

Fifth, I finished my last class for my Master's degree on Tuesday, which feels awesome…and it's the reason this is coming a couple days later than I told some of you it would. Sorry about that, but I took some time to celebrate and it put me a tad behind updating.

Finally, I'll shut up and let you get to reading. Enjoy the chapter!

* * *

**Cheated Hearts

* * *

**

_X. These are feelings too hard to measure _

(Here's something you should know: He's trying to be the man he thinks he should be for the life he's come to want. But just because he's trying now, doesn't mean he's making any progress. It also doesn't mean he's not liable to still make mistakes.)

Puck's day started out good. He drove to Kurt's house, followed him to The Wingate Hotel, and watched him pick Quinn up. Now he knew where to head after school to find her, where she'd been staying.

School had gone normally, though it felt like it went by quicker now that he was actually paying attention and doing stuff during his classes, which was a nice surprise. Glee practice was also predictable. Rachel and Finn doing some song she picked for way overly complicated reasons- yeah, he saw that one coming. Finn didn't seem to jazzed about the song, but Puck figured what dude would _want_ to do that song?

Then things got weird after practice. He'd hung around talking to Mike and Matt a bit and then as they left, Mr. Schue called out to him. He turned, walked over to him (hoping this wouldn't be some kind of lecture about all the stuff that went down with Finn and Quinn).

"Puck," Mr. Schue begins (and it's then that Puck notices Tina's standing by Mr. Schue), "are you planning on performing a duet with anyone?"

"No, I was just going to do the list thing," he answers.

"Good. Tina decided she'd really like to perform and she needs a partner. I think you guys could do a great duet. So maybe you could consider working with her?" Mr. Schue suggests. Before Puck can respond, Mr. Schue claps him on the back and repeats, "Just think about it. And have a great rest of the day, both of you."

He picks up his bag and leaves Puck and Tina standing at the piano.

"Uhh…," Puck stalls. He didn't especially want to do a duet, but he didn't have anything against Tina (and didn't want to give anyone in glee club any more reason to hate him besides, it was a miracle they still let him be here at all after everything), so he didn't want to just say no- that seemed mean.

"Look," Tina begins nervously (she's never talked to Puck before, it was kind of intimidating), "I know you were probably counting on doing the list and it would be less work than actually doing a duet probably but…" she hesitates, but admits with a bashful smile, "earlier today Artie told me that the duet he's doing with Quinn tomorrow, will be for me. And I don't know what it is yet, or if it's going to make things better between us, how I want them to be, but I have a feeling that I'm going to want to sing something for him. Not in the same way- he has some things apologize for, but just… something. And I never get the chance to sing any lines solo really anyway so I don't want to pass up this opportunity to." She can't tell if Puck is starting to come around to the idea of working with her or not so she adds on her last bit of reasoning that got her here, "Plus, neither Mike or Matt want to have to sing anything solo at all and Finn's already done his song. Kurt said he'd do a duet with me on top of his one with Mercedes, but before I took him up on that offer I just thought, maybe you'd have a reason you'd want to sing too."

Puck sighs. He gets why she wants to do the duet (even if he didn't really understand it because he had no idea anything was actually going on between her and Artie) and she had a good point about why he was one of her only options out of the guys in glee. He still doesn't want to do a duet, but he'd feel bad for turning her down. His life isn't just about what he wants or doesn't want to do anymore though. He warns, "I kind of have a lot going on right now." She nods and looks discouraged. He offers, "I'm supposed to maybe hear about a couple of possible jobs today and if I don't then I doubt I will over the weekend so I'd have that time pretty free probably. So if I don't end up hearing about a job today, I guess I could work with you on this. I'd want to be ready to do it by Tuesday, if that's okay though?"

"Yeah, I actually wanted to be able to do it then too," Tina agrees, relieved.

Puck nods and turns to head for the door, but pivots back around as he realizes something. He asks, "Didn't you used to have a stutter?"

Everyone seemed to be noticing that lately. "Speech therapy finally cured me of it," Tina lies because it was a lot easier than explaining the truth and not everyone needed to know anyway.

"Oh," Puck returns. "Well, I'll find you tomorrow and let you know if I'll have time for the duet," he says and offers a simple "later" before leaving.

After that kind of awkward encounter (he knew he probably wasn't her ideal choice, there just weren't a lot of guys in glee to choose from), Puck heads straight for the Wingate hoping he wasn't too late to catch Quinn at some point. He manages to talk the receptionist into telling him whether or not there was a young, blonde, pregnant girl currently there or if she had yet to be seen passing through the lobby. The woman didn't want to give out information on guests, but since he wasn't asking for a room number, just if she'd come back yet, she divulged that no, she hadn't seen her. So, since Quinn apparently wasn't there, Puck takes a seat in the lobby and waits for her to return.

As he waited, Puck had started to drift to sleep, multiple times. So when he finally sees the front door open and Quinn step into the large lobby, he's not sure whether or not he's dreaming. But then he sees her stop, three steps into the lobby, as she takes sight of him and her face changes into…he's not sure what, but it's definitely not a happy face and that's how he knows he's not dreaming (if he was, she'd be happy to see him).

She walks over to him. (How did he find her? The only people at school who knew where she was staying were Kurt and Mr. Abrams and Ms. Pillsbury - who probably shared it with Mr. Schue- and she was sure none of them would tell him.)

He stands up as she approaches the little seating area (two couches, four chairs all in a square around a table with magazines and newspapers), wipes his hands on his jeans because his palms feel kind of sweaty all of a sudden. He's not going to just accept her being mad, even though he has no idea why she would be, so he explains away as she comes within a few steps, "Hey. I'm sorry for just showing up. I know you wanted to…do things alone."

"How did you find me?" she interjects because she just started becoming friends with Kurt and, unfortunately, he was the most likely person to have told Puck and she really hoped he hadn't.

He shrugs, offers the lie Kurt had thought of, "I asked the guys who pulled all those pranks on Kurt's house- you know, the lawn furniture thing and the egging- where he lived. Pete gave up the address right away, probably thought I was going to do something to Kurt. Since I knew he was giving you rides in the morning, I just followed him from his house this morning." He has no idea if she was going to think that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he was determined to make sure that this encounter didn't make things any worse between them. So he offers, "I'm sorry for showing up, but I'm not sorry for doing all that. It's still my baby you're carrying and you're still you, I needed to know where you were, that you weren't staying somewhere like the Red Carpet Inn." He adds, softly, barely audible, "Just needed to know you were okay."

She sighs a little. She understood all of that. She just wishes that he hadn't said it and that she didn't know that he meant it. If he was just the jerk he seemed intent on being a few weeks ago it would make all of this a lot easier. "I'm sorry too," she offers, "I should have told you where I was staying. You're right, you do deserve to know that." Then she does something she knew she needed to eventually (just hadn't been sure she was ready for- she had been avoiding this part of her life because it made less sense than anything else lately), she tells him, "And you should have my new cell number too- just in case of…here, just give me your phone, I'll put it in."

He hands over his phone, glad that she's willingly giving him a way to contact her.

She may have…browsed the contents of his phone quickly after she put in her new number. (She just took a little chance, she wanted to know what she was taking a chance on.) Surprisingly, he only had the kids from glee, a few football teammates, and his family's numbers. No random girls (no girls besides the ones in glee- though that unfortunately meant Santana). No text messages other than some kind of disgusting ones from his teammates. She hands his phone back, feeling pretty good about her decision.

"Uh," he begins, feeling a bit awkward (his hand brushed hers taking his phone back, made his voice disappear for a second), "Letting you know I knew where you were now wasn't really the only reason I came by."

"Is something wrong?" she asks immediately, because lately, things going wrong seemed to be what was constantly happening.

"No," he denies immediately. He explains, "I drove by Foster's yesterday and it turns out Addie's back. We kind of talked and I told her…everything."

"She knows about…" Quinn trails off, not knowing what to say anymore. The baby? Her? What designation will make it easier to do whatever she's going to have to do in the end?

"Yeah," Puck confirms, "and she said that if you want to talk, just give her a call or stop by. She wanted you to know that she's here if you need her." He adds, hoping that it was okay with her despite her decision about doing this alone, "Me too."

"I know," she assures. (And she does know. Despite all the let downs and heartbreak, she knows, even though she doesn't always want to know, that he'd do anything she needed him to.)

He pulls out the piece of paper with Addie's number on it and hands it over with a simple, "Here, she wanted you to have her number." Before she just keeps the paper, Puck realizes, "Oh, actually, I need to get her number off of it first. I forgot to put it in my phone and she's looking into helping me find a job so I kind of need it."

She hands it back and as he quickly puts it in his phone she refrains from saying anything about him looking for work. She has a pretty good idea of why he's looking for a job, but she hadn't been thinking about any of this (or had tried not to) and she really didn't know where to go with him so it was probably better if she just didn't do anything. When he hands the piece of paper back, she asks something she'd been wondering about (since they were talking now anyway), "How'd your mom take the news?"

"As good as possible probably," he thinks.

Well, that was good, but not exactly what she was looking to find out. She doesn't know how to put this tactfully. She tries, "She didn't… I mean, it didn't…_depress _her?"

He's confused by the question and her intent look for a beat, but then he figures it out. He waves off, "Oh, no. She's good. And just to make sure she stays that way, in light of the news and everything, she's been going to either therapy or an AA meeting every night this week. But she's doing good. Hasn't had any problems in a while."

"Good," Quinn responds. And then for the other thing she had been wondering about, "How about Kelyn? Did you tell her yet?"

"No," Puck says, running a hand over the back of his Mohawk (it feels a little…odd to actually be talking again), "my mom thought that, since she knows you, it would probably be best if we told her together- after you meet my mom. But I told her how you weren't ready for that yet and she was cool with it. She wants to meet you as soon as you're ready though."

That made sense about Kelyn, though going through with that joined many other things she wasn't looking forward to doing. She really didn't want to have to tell Kelyn what would surely be odd and…sad news. She also knew meeting Puck's mom was something she really should do, she is carrying the woman's granddaughter after all. She nods and accepts, "Yeah, that's a good idea. And tell your mom that- I figure weekends would probably be best for everyone- I'm busy this weekend, but the weekend after that, I guess we can try to set something up for then if it works for her."

He wants to ask what she's doing this weekend (because he has no idea what could be keeping her busy), but she could take that wrong so he refrains. Instead he just says, "Good. I'll let her know."

Things had been more tense and speaking to each other had felt stunted, but now an awkward silence settled.

(He wanted to stay. Even if there was a weirdness between them, he'd rather be here and weird than anywhere she wasn't.)

(She wanted him to stay.

But things were weird between them because of everything that had happened between them up through this point and so much of it was…awful. She didn't want to think about any of it, didn't want to try and sift through her romantic life at all. She just wanted it to go away and to do that she needed him to go away.

She knew all the reasons she needed him to leave, but still, she wanted him to stay.)

He knows what she said though, about wanting him to respect how she's going to do things alone, so he figures he should probably give her, her space. He supposes, "I should probably get going. Kel will be getting dropped off at home soon." Rather than waiting for any kind of response (he doesn't want to know if she would have wanted him to stay or not), he simply says, "See you later."

"Yeah, bye," she returns as he shuffles around her to head for the exit. She stays there in the lobby for another minute (telling herself that she does not want to go after him) before heading up to her room and trying to spend the rest of the night distracting herself with her plan for her parents for that weekend, her homework, and practicing for her performance with Artie tomorrow. (It works okay, but despite her best efforts her mind keeps wandering back to Puck. But thinking of him more doesn't help. She still has no idea what she wants or should do there.)

-o-o-o-

Puck tried not to make too big a deal out of what Quinn told him to tell his mom. When he relayed what she said to his mom, he emphasized that he wasn't sure she was actually ready for yet another big stressful…thing, it had just come up and it's possible she just felt required to offer a time. His mom assures him that it's okay if it doesn't happen the weekend Quinn mentioned, but she's going to keep the entire weekend free just in case anyway.

The rest of his night was spent watching his phone. Addie did call, but she said that she talked to all the people she told him about and gave them his number in case they wanted to call. She wasn't sure that any of them could necessarily afford to hire anyone new right now, which she was sorry about, so she promised she was going to try and come up with more people to call or job possibilities for him. He thanked her and hoped he didn't sound as disappointed as he felt when he did it.

Friday started out with him seeking out Tina to let her know he could go ahead and do a duet with her. The problem with trying to find Tina though was that he really didn't know her at all and had no idea where to likely find her.

After three passing periods have passed and he still hasn't found her he does come across someone else- Quinn. He figures that they're talking now and if talking is going to become normal between them again then maybe they should increase the frequency of their conversations and vary the types they have (i.e. not always about their situation). So he approaches her at her locker and gets to the point before she can say anything, "Do you have any idea where Tina could be right now?"

"Tina as in Tina from glee?" she questions because him asking about her was really unexpected. Since when did he even know the names of the girls in glee?

"Yeah," he confirms and he knows how it doesn't exactly sound like him so he offers, "Mr. Shue wanted us to work together but I haven't been able to find her all day."

That explains it. Quinn thinks about it for a second and offers, "I'm pretty sure her locker is near the gym and if you don't find her anywhere around there, Artie's locker is right by the principal's office and he'll be coming from the science wing after next period and he'll pretty likely know how you can find Tina."

"Awesome, thanks," Puck says gratefully and lets the ringing warning bell be the end to this interaction (hopefully keeping things simple would help make them normal between them again).

He finds Tina in the hall near the gym at the start of lunch and she decides that they should just go ahead and start figuring out what they were going to do over lunch. He hadn't been spending much time in the cafeteria lately (it was weird, everyone knowing what happened, some people being mad at him for it, some thinking he was cooler for it) and he doesn't feel like stirring up rumors by eating in there with Tina so he offers to take her off campus for lunch and she, luckily, accepts.

Tina wants him to be able to play his guitar in whatever song they choose, just liking the idea of it. He's more than fine with that; he feels more comfortable singing with his guitar in his hands anyway. Other than that though, Tina doesn't have a lot of thoughts on what they should perform- seems pretty open to anything.

So as they sit down with their lunches, he finally just asks, "What would Artie like? I mean, you're doing this for him, right? Why don't we just do something that he'd be into then?"

"Artie would like anything," Tina answers, "he seriously listens to everything. Rap, hip-hop, classic rock, metal, blue grass, gospel- I've seen him listen to absolutely anything. He'd probably even like it if we did some cheesy '80s pop song."

"Like this one?" he questions, with a gesture to the speakers above them playing "Heat of the Moment" for the patrons of Subway.

"Probably," she says with a smile, "there's no way I'm singing "Heat of the Moment" though. My only solo lines in any song so far has been in a sugary 80's pop song, I'm not going to do another one and create the idea that it's all I can do."

"Okay," he accepts, seeing her point. But that leaves them stuck still.

By the time they finish lunch and have to be back at school the only thing they've decided is that they won't be doing any cheesy 80's song, any metal song, nothing religious, and no country (didn't want to copy Rachel and Finn). Overall, they didn't really make much progress.

-o-o-o-

After school the glee club meets to hear two performances. Santana and Brittany had also wanted to do their performance today as well (which everyone was pretty surprised to hear, they assumed the girls would just do the lists like Matt and Mike).

Santana and Brittany decide they want to go first. They sing "Hey School Boy" by Stefy. They trade off verses and sing the chorus' together. They sing the song well, but everyone finds it at least a little…odd. Finn actually finds it awkward since half of the time they seem to be directing the song at him (when they're not distracted by each other). Everyone else finds it disturbing for how it's pretty blatantly half-directed at Finn. And Mr. Schue realizes that he's really going to have to start being more specific in what he wants (and start setting some guidelines on "appropriateness").

When it ends he tells the girls, "That was very well performed. It's not exactly what I had in mind-"

"You said duet and we both sang so it was a duet," Santana jumps in.

"Yes," Mr. Schue confirms, "just for the idea that the duets were supposed to be something that would be… heart warming for the judges that wasn't ideal, but still good."

Santana rolls her eyes as she sits back down with Brittany. "Heart warming"? Why would anyone want to be heart warming?

"Alright, Artie and Quinn," Mr. Schue says, transitioning with a smile as he calls them to perform.

Artie rolls up to be front and center and Quinn brings a chair with her to sit next to him (figuring it would simply look better if they were on the same level as they were sitting down- plus, lately any time she didn't have to be on her feet was good). After he gets his acoustic guitar in place, Artie explains, "We decided to do two songs. This first one is the one we thought may be good for competition. We made a change to it that, we thought, would make it especially appealing to judges for regional's or state."

They sing "Thinking, Drinking, Sinking, Feeling," by the Slow Club. They stick to the way it was originally broken up by the female and male parts. Artie plays it on the guitar, no other instruments joining in except Quinn using a tambourine at the appropriate time. They change the, "Ha-ha-aya Ah-ah-ah-aya Oh-oh-oh-aya-oh" bits to sound like they're instead singing out an elongated version of "Ohio"- hence the appropriateness should they sing it in any competition in their home state. The change got a little surprised, pleased laugh from Mr. Schue and a few other members as they realized what they had done. Overall, it was a success that left people smiling.

After it's over, as Quinn carefully sets the tambourine down on the ground beside her chair, Artie reveals the intent of their next song, "This next song was something we realized probably wasn't right for competition, which is why we did two songs, but I…really wanted to sing it for Tina. So, Tina, this is for you."

A few people actually seem surprised by Artie's declaration, but most seemed to completely expect it of Artie (Tina may have told a couple of them how Artie already told her he'd be doing a song for her and they may have spread the word).

They perform an altered version of "About You Now" by the Sugababes.

Artie started them off singing, "It was so easy that night, should have been strong, yeah, I lied, nobody gets me like you."

Then Quinn sang, "I know everything changes, all the cities and faces, but I know how I feel about you."

Together they sang, "Can we bring yesterday back around? Cause I know how I feel about you now, I was dumb, I was wrong, I let you down, but I know how I feel about you now."

Back to Artie for an intent delivery of, "All that it takes is one more chance, will our last kiss be our last?"

"Give me tonight and I'll show you," they sang together.

Quinn took the same bit again, "I know everything changes, all the cities and faces, but I know how I feel about you."

There was another joint repetition of the chorus, "Can we bring yesterday back around? Cause I know how I feel about you now, I was dumb, I was wrong, I let you down, but I know how I feel about you now."

And Quinn ended it (Artie having decided she should because it felt uneven to him), "Not a day passed me by, not a day passed me by, where I don't think about you."

It was a rather subdued performance. Quinn had tried to pick a spot on the back wall and focus on it as she sang her parts (trying with all her might not to even so much glance at Puck- it wasn't _her _song, she didn't want him getting the wrong message). Artie had kept his eyes firmly on Tina throughout the performance, which she seemed pleased with since she started smiling only a few lines in. (It may not have been the sweetest or most romantic song ever, but Artie had managed to find/make a song specific to them and considering their unusual relationship history, Tina thought that was truly amazing. Not to mention how nice the intent of the song was.)

"Those were both really great, thanks guys," Mr. Schue says after the bit of applause dies down. Then he dismisses them quickly, not trying too hard to hide the fact that he knew that the last song would mean two people there needed to talk so by letting them go he was making that happen as soon as possible.

As most of the club heads for the exits, Quinn stands and leans down to give Artie a quick hug. As she does so, she says quietly, "Thank you for being my partner."

"Thank you for helping me," Artie returns with a smile as she pulls away.

She glances over at Tina, who's waiting on the risers, picks up her bag, and turns back to Artie as she wishes him, "Good luck."

"Thanks," he says again.

As the door closes behind Quinn (having been the last one out), she thinks she can hear what could very possibly be kissing.

Quinn has a mission she needs to accomplish before she meets Kurt in the parking lot and not wanting to keep her ride waiting, she heads for Santana's locker quickly. Luckily, Santana is indeed there, with Brittany. They don't seem to notice her as she approaches, but she lets them know she's won't just be passing by, by telling them as she closes in on being only a few feet away from them, "I'll see you both at practice tomorrow morning."

"You're back on the team?" Santana inquires incredulously.

"No," she anwers with a smirk, waiting for one of them to figure it out.

It takes a few seconds, but it finally dawns on Santana and she checks, "You're our substitute coach?"

"Yes and thank you for letting me know Coach Sylvester wasn't here so I could persuade Principal Figgins to give me the job. If you hadn't, I may not have even known Coach Sylvester needed a sub," Quinn informs her with a practiced sweetness.

Santana glares at Quinn, angry that she played any role in this unfortunate occurrence.

Quinn didn't seek out Santana to fan the flames of their rivalry though. She never wanted the competition between them in the first place (she had just happened to get a lot of things Santana wanted- plus being captain kind of required her to be bitchy to the other girls pretty frequently) and she certainly didn't want it in her life now when she had much more important things to deal with. So she drops the fakeness, her expression softening, and offers, "Given…everything, I'm anticipating that it may be difficult to get the team to listen to me. So I was hoping I could count on you to fall in line this week." She can see a retort on Santana's tongue and rushes on, holding her hand up to halt whatever Santana wants to interject, "I know Coach Sylvester still hasn't made you captain even though you'd make the best one on the team. If you treat me like the coach, I'll treat you like the captain for the week. I'll get the others to treat you like the captain too and by the time Coach Sylvester comes back she'll see how the others fall in line for you and acknowledge you as their captain and she'd have no choice but to make you captain officially finally." Santana's smart enough to be reasonable and Quinn can see her thinking it over so she adds on, "You only have to manage a week of treating me like the coach and you get what you want for the whole rest of the year, you get to be captain."

Brittany, who had seemed distracted by her hair through the whole conversation, chimes in to Santana, "Wait, you're not captain? I thought Coach Sylvester already made you captain."

"She keeps calling meetings with us and almost making me captain and then deciding she isn't sure yet right before she finally says anything," Santana responds tersely. She considers it for another second and decides, telling Quinn, "Fine. You have a deal. But this better work."

"It will," Quinn promises confidently (though honestly, she's not that sure).

Quinn begins to walk away, her mission being complete, when Brittany calls, "Bye Quinn, see you tomorrow." Before she can return that Brittany realizes, "You don't have a car anymore. We'll pick you up tomorrow."

Santana glares at Brittany for volunteering her to give Quinn a ride.

"It's fine," Quinn assures, knowing how this wasn't a thought out idea, "I can find a way there on my own."

Brittany seems confused and upset at Quinn turning down her offer, so Santana rolls her eyes and gives in, "No you should ride with us. It'll look better for both of us anyway, right?"

That is a decent point. The believability of their mutual respect would be better off if they shared a ride, seemed like more of a united front. So Quinn accepts simply with, "That's a good point. I'm at the Wingate."

They part ways for real this time and Quinn returns to the hotel room that's been her home to prepare for tomorrow. Not only is she going to be the temporary coach to the Cheerio's- the team she was kicked off of- but she's also going to get herself a permanent solution to her living situation. It was going to be a big day.

(Around ten she gets a text from Artie that reads:_ It worked awesomely! We're still hanging out:) Thanks again for the help friend._ It makes her smile- and cry a little, damn pregnancy hormones- because she made a real friend this week, her first in a while and she really needed it.)

-o-o-o-

Puck had to keep reminding himself that Quinn didn't want him. She wanted to do everything alone. So the song, it wasn't for him. He knew it was Artie's thing. If he was signing for Tina then he was responsible for picking the song. Still, he couldn't help but notice how it could have been kind of appropriate for them too. Only Quinn never even glanced his way throughout the song so it definitely wasn't for them, just a coincidence that bits of it could fit (if she had changed her mind).

Despite the fact that they had talked a little, Puck knew better than to think that Quinn would come to him and tell him that she did mean what she sang to be for him. He had done some pretty crappy things to her (mainly the whole sexting thing) and he knew that after a week of trying to show he was a different guy than the one that hurt her (and not a lot towards that anyway since he was pretty stuck on ideas), he hadn't even begun to make up for everything. So he heads home after glee thinking that he's got to make progress on changing her mind about him a lot faster, because he's tired of days passing and feeling like he's in the same place he was when she told him she didn't want to do any of this with him.

After his usual browsing through the classifieds and online job search, Puck gets a call from Addie. She tells him that her friend Hank had considered what she told him about Puck and decided that he'd meet with him. Hank always had dinner at Corner Café on Friday nights and he told Addie to tell Puck to stop by around six.

It's nearly a two-hour wait between the call and when he's supposed to show up and Puck is nervous for the extent of it. This could be his only shot at a job, nothing else has been working out for him, so he needs this guy to hire him and he doesn't know how to make that happen. It doesn't help that he looked up what a general contractor is and he's pretty sure he's not at all qualified to work for one.

When the time comes, he begins to head out of the apartment, putting on his jacket as he heads for the door.

"Where are you going?" his mom calls from the kitchen.

Oh, right, he forgot to tell her. "I'm going to meet a guy about a possible job," he answers.

Good. For a second there she worried he could be going off to do whatever teenage thing he used to do with his Friday night and she knew that if she was Quinn, him returning to that behavior would not be a good thing. "Good luck," she wishes him.

"Thanks," he calls back to her as he leaves, nervously playing with his keys in his hands all the way down to his truck.

Puck had never been to the Corner Café. From the outside it looked very unattractive- an old building standing alone in a dirt lot. Even Foster's was in better shape. The inside doesn't seem as old and weathered as the outside, but Puck doesn't have time to pay too much attention to it as he tries to figure out who he's supposed to be meeting with. He figured he'd just look for an old guy eating alone, but there were like three guys like that and two other old guys eating with other old guys. And a few other scattered groups of people that the guy could be in if he didn't quite look the age Puck assumed he was around. If he ate here every week though, maybe some of the people working there knew him. So Puck stops a waitress and asks if there's a Hank there and he gets directed to a corner booth in the back.

Hank has lines on his face and some clear sun damage to his skin, but he only looks to be around sixty, sixty-five even though Puck, doing the math, knows he's got to be a little bit older than that. He's wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt and suspenders, from what Puck can see. He has broad shoulders and still looks pretty fit. He also has a full head of silver hair.

He stands up from the booth when he sees Puck approaching (Addie must have remembered to give a description to at least one of them). "Puck?" Hank asks, holding his hand out.

Puck shakes the man's hand firmly as he confirms, "Yes, Mr. Dixon." (He's really glad Addie mentioned the guy's last name. Starting out by calling him by his first name didn't seem like the most respectful path.)

"Hank," he insists as he sits back down and gestures for Puck to take a seat across from him. As Puck sits down, Hank inquires, "Puck your real name or a nickname?"

"Nickname, after my last name. My name is actually Noah Puckerman," Puck answered, hoping the guy wouldn't insist on calling him Noah (if he got a job with him).

"You prefer Puck?" Hank guesses.

"Yeah," Puck confirms.

"Why?" Hank questions curiously.

Puck shrugs and offers honestly, "Because I got the "Puckerman" from my dad and when he walked out I really didn't want to have any association with him any more. And if people called me just Puck, like it was my only name, then my last name couldn't be "Puckerman." That never made much sense when he said it out loud, or even when he thought about it lately, so he adds on, "It made more sense when I was ten, when he left."

"Understood," Hank responds simply. "So, Puck," he begins, "we have about ten minutes until my dinner gets here, so we have ten minutes to figure out if you should work for me or not." He takes a drink of his water (Puck wonders if there's something he's supposed to be saying) and then says, "Addie told me a lot about you. She likes you, which is a good start. She said you and a girl have gotten in a bad way?"

"Yes," Puck responds honestly (wondering if this old guy expected a "sir" to be added on there).

"And you need a job so you can take care of the girl and the baby?" Hank questions.

"Yeah, if the girl lets me," Puck answers and realizes that may not make complete sense, but probably wouldn't make him look too good if he explained everything so he adds on simply, "It's a long story."

"Addie already told me," Hank informs him. He can see Puck thinking that that was a bad sign. Granted, some parts of the story Addie told him didn't make the kid look too good. But he understood how difficult the situation was. It had been hard enough to deal with the idea that he was going to be a father right after high school and he already knew he wanted to marry his wife June. He could imagine how difficult it would be to be in this situation if you realize that you want the girl forever _after_ you both find out she's pregnant and after you've already broken up (from what he got from the story- Addie kept interjecting her own opinions so it was hard to keep track of what she knew happened and what she thought happened). He decides to let the kid off the hook and offers, "You're trying to step-up, do the right thing in a difficult situation. That's honorable."

Puck breaths a silent sigh of relief. He wasn't so sure he was that honorable (given the ways he'd helped make things fall apart a couple of times), but he was glad the older, kind of intimidating man thought that about him. He didn't know what to say to it though. Was "thank you" an appropriate response? (He really wished he'd paid attention all those times his mom attempted to teach him how to be polite.)

Thankfully, Hank continues after only the briefest of pauses. He questions, "So what we need to figure out is if you have any skills that could help you do the job or if you seem likely to be able to learn any. Have you ever fixed anything?"

Well, he doesn't know if it'll count, but Puck offers, "I fix my truck all the time, keep it running. I fixed the sign at Foster's once too, but he was telling me what to do the whole time. I kind of fixed the kitchen sink once when it was leaking, but I don't think I solved any complicated problem, there just seemed to be something loose."

"You ever built anything?" Hank continues.

That's a decent question for him. Puck tries to emphasize the good to hopefully get the job by responding, "I took woodshop one and two freshman and sophomore year of high school. They've been my only A's in high school." Okay, maybe that wasn't the best thing to say. He adds on hastily, "But I'm working on changing that. I've been improving all of my grades."

Hank simply nods in response and moves on questioning, "You any good at math?"

"I think so," Puck answers confidently and then adds on something he knows doesn't sound too great of him, "I kind of…skipped a bunch of my math classes, but now that I've been going and doing all the work again I caught up a lot easier than any of my other classes."

"Okay. I'm a general contractor and half of the guys who work for me are too and the others are only licensed in some things, not enough to be general contractors. What you need to be a general contractor in Ohio is an electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, refrigeration, and hydronics licenses. Then there's also this laws/business practices test, but that's not important right now. On top of being able to deal with problems of all those natures for customers, since we frequently do renovations or construction, we also do wood work. Sometimes my men take on a simple plumbing job alone and sometimes we pick up a contract to restore an entire building so the whole team has to go to work on it together. We take whatever work we can get," Hank explains the business.

Then he breaks down for Puck what could happen for him, "Now, you have some woodworking skills and I'm confident enough at this point that I'd be willing to try and teach you some of the other skills, see if you pick them up enough to continue to teach you. If you prove you can learn how to do at least some of the other parts of the job, then I'll put you on as an apprentice. You wouldn't be able to do any job alone because you can't be licensed- you're not eighteen and you don't have the experience. If you do a good enough job, I'd be willing to lie and say you have three years experience as soon as you turn eighteen so you could take all the tests and get licensed so you could work alone because I know your situation means you'd really need the extra money being able to work alone would bring. I can't pay you until you learn how to do enough to accompany someone on an actual job, but you'll have a break from school coming up for the winter holidays, right? I could probably spend a few days trying to teach you things then, if you pick it up we could have you working by the New Year. Sound good?"

"Yeah," Puck answers immediately. Honestly, he's not sure if it sounded that good or not, but it was a job offer and he didn't have anything better so he wasn't about to turn it down.

Hank figures that the kid probably wasn't expecting a job to come with such a long term plan and may not realize yet how that was a good thing. So he sighs and adds, "I know the job doesn't sound like what you probably had in mind for your future. But, you become qualified to do all these things, it's easier to find work. And considering you could soon have people counting on you, consistent work is what you need."

"I know," Puck assures, "for me, family comes first. I don't care what I have to do to make sure they're okay." He figured he wouldn't elaborate with examples of how he's done that as the pot cupcakes probably weren't the best story or the Burger King thing given how that ended.

"Good," Hank concludes. He moves on, "I'm going to be out of town for about two weeks. My oldest daughter thought I need a break from working and insisted I spend Thanksgiving week and the week after with her and her family in Boston. I've never been good at saying no to any of my kids so I'll be gone for those two weeks. That means I'm going to be pretty busy this week before I leave so I can't start teaching you anything. I should have time a week from Saturday though to at least see about these wood skills you got from your classes. You come by my house and you can use the shop in the back- I'll have you build something to see what you can do. I'll also give you the books you'd get to use on all the exams so you can possibly start to learn how to do things on your own."

"Okay," Puck agrees, "thanks."

"I'll call you with a time and directions sometime this week," Hank responds. "Now, I'm sure you have a family you should probably be getting back to. Wouldn't want you to be late to your own dinner," Hank says as he stands up and extends his hand again. Puck shakes it again as Hank tells him, "It was good to meet you Puck. I hope everything works out for you your girl and I hope you the job works out for you."

"Thank you," Puck says sincerely, "I really appreciate the opportunity you're giving me."

Hank nods, smiles, and understands.

Puck heads out of the café feeling better about the future than he has in a while. He knows he may not be able to learn everything as well as he needs to actually get to work for Hank, but if he can then he could have a job for a long time, long enough that maybe he'll never again have to worry about how he could possibly support Quinn and the baby. He'd have a career, maybe not the coolest one or one that does really good even in a bad economy, but it'd be a lot better than working his way up the job-chain at a fast food restaurant like he thought he'd probably end up doing.

So, Friday was a pretty good day.

-o-o-o-

Puck's Saturday could not be defined as "good" or "bad" as easily as his Friday. Nothing terrible happened Friday and he got a shot at a good job, a way to build a good future, so it was a good day. Saturday was more of a mixture of things that he was unsure of whether they'd turn out to be bad or good.

It started with Tina knocking on his door at two in the afternoon. He forgot he told her they'd work on the duet thing today and that he said they could do it at his apartment.

"Hi," she offers, looking a little unsure.

"Right, the duet, I almost forgot, come on in," Puck says as he opens the door wider to let her in.

He leads her to the living room by way of the kitchen to stop in with his mom. She's sitting at the kitchen table going through a bunch of papers (he has no idea what). He introduces quickly, "Ma' this is Tina from glee club, Tina my mom. We have to work on this duet thing, can you try to keep Kel from bugging us?"

"Nice to meet you Tina," May says, glancing up from her papers to greet the girl. She continues with what she was doing as she responds to Puck, "And you're the one who bought Kelyn water balloons Noah. If she uses them on you, that's your problem."

Puck stalks out of the kitchen with a disgruntled grunt, Tina following behind because she didn't know what else to do. He plops down on the couch in the adjacent living room and asks, "So, come up with an idea of what song we should do since yesterday?"

"No," she answers honestly, taking a seat on the couch as she digs in her bag. She pulls out a few papers as she continues, "But I did have Mr. Schue give us a copy of the lists of songs other people have submitted. I thought it may help give us a better idea."

"Good idea," he says as he reads the first one, which she's holding out between them so they could go through them together. He quickly concludes, "Well this is clearly Rachel's list and I'm not doing anything from it."

"They're not bad suggestions," Tina tries. He looks at her pointedly (they were like eighty percent Broadway musical songs) and she relents, "Yeah, I don't want to do any of them either."

There's four more lists in her hand, but Puck figures maybe they could get through them even quicker if they had an idea of what they wanted to do. So he asks, "Didn't the whole thing with Artie yesterday help you figure out what you wanted to sing for him at all?"

"Not really," she admits. She smiles as she tells him, "Artie would like anything. We could do "Ebony and Ivory" and he'd think it's great. He just…" she trails off blushing.

"Likes you that much?" Puck guesses. Even he had caught on to the fact that Wheels had it bad for Asian Chick way before yesterday's serenade.

She manages a small nod as she glances away and blushes more. Trying to stop her cheeks from burning more, she changes the topic by scanning the list at the top of the pile and commenting, "Maybe we could somehow make 'Love Will Keep Us Together' un-cheesy."

"I'm not sure anyone could make the Captain and Tennille not cheesy," Puck responds honestly.

"What are you doing?" comes a curious voice from the edge of the hallway.

"Trying to decide a song to sing for glee club," Puck tells Kelyn and hopes she doesn't try to help (that would only make this take longer- she was very opinionated).

She passes through the living room to the kitchen and comments, "That's right, I almost forgot how you're totally un-cool now."

Kelny hadn't insulted Tina exactly, but Puck figured it was close enough to the type of thing he knows she's gotten at school that he should offer an apology. He begins, "Sorry about Kel-"

"It's fine," Tina jumps in, waving it off, "my little brother is the same way."

Turning his attention back to the list, Puck comments, "The Stones, cool. Let's just do that one."

"I don't think "Let's Spend the Night Together" would be the best song to impress the judges given the topic," Tina offers thoughtfully.

Kelyn passes back through the living room without so much as glancing at the two people on the couch, which just isn't right. Puck notices, catches his sister before she gets to the hall, and quickly pries her hands open to her protests of "Hey!" He demands confused, "What are you doing with food dye and glitter?"

"Nothing," she tries with her best innocent face. She tries to snatch them back out of his hands, but he simply holds them higher than she can reach.

"You really seem to want them back a lot for someone who's not doing anything with them," Puck observes already knowing she had been lying.

"It's nothing bad, I promise," Kelyn swears.

Puck considers it (and damn it, she's giving him her sad eyes) and relents, "Fine. You can have one of them back."

She sighs and decides, "Food dye."

He hands it over and warns, "Don't do anything I would do with it."

She snorts ungracefully as she skips down the hall and retorts, "Like I'd do anything you'd do. You're not cool enough to copy."

Puck sits back down on the couch and asks, still completely puzzled, "What could she possibly be doing with food dye and glitter?"

"I have no idea," Tina answers, though she really wants to know now. Food dye, glitter, and whatever the girl may have in her room- it was an intriguing mystery.

They both return their attention back to the lists. This one (which Puck is pretty sure was probably Matt's) didn't have anything they both were willing to do. After switching to the next list, it isn't long before Tina comments, "Oh, Otis Redding! Artie is a huge fan of R&B and soul, among other things."

Yeah, Puck doesn't have a problem with that exactly…if it were any other song than the one on this list. "I can't do "These Arms of Mine," he says awkwardly because he doesn't want to say why.

Of course, why is the natural question to ask and it's exactly what Tina does. "Why?"

Crap. Well, maybe if he's honest she'll move on from this suggestion. He offers, "I kind of…danced with Quinn to it once. It wouldn't exactly be a song for Artie if I was in on doing a song like that in glee club."

Tina seems to consider that, but then she asks, "You don't want to do anything for Quinn though? I thought you were sort of…going after her. I mean, Kurt said how you were trying to find out where she's staying and Mike said that you told him and Matt that you care about her. Plus everyone's noticed how you've actually been showing up to your classes."

Word certainly got around glee club well. Puck processes it all and tries to continue his original mission of getting her to agree with his veto of the song by admitting, "I am trying to prove to Quinn that she should give me a chance to be there for her. But she said she wants to do things alone and she wants me to respect that. I don't really think doing that song in front of glee club would be respecting that."

"Not if you dedicate it to her like Artie did for me, but if it just happens to be the song we choose, if I was Quinn, it'd say, to me, that you remember details about us because you care. It's not like you'd be declaring your paternal right to your baby, you'd just be offering a clear sign that you want to be around for her because you care about her," Tina reasons.

Well, he hadn't considered that. It sounded pretty good to Puck. One gesture to show Quinn that he cared about her? It sounded too easy. He checks, "You really think that it would just be taken as a nice gesture?"

Mostly. Honestly Tina knew better. She knew she didn't know their relationship history or Quinn all that well, but she also didn't see how, despite what she didn't know, it could possibly be a bad thing. "I do," she assures, but being cautious she adds on, "but does your mom know about everything? Because I'm sure, as a woman, she would think the same thing. You could ask her."

His mom knew everything he had done, everything that had happened between him and Quinn, so she probably would be able to offer a more informed opinion. "Hey Ma' can you come in here a sec please?" he calls.

"You hollered," she comments with a pointed look at Puck as she comes into the room.

He explains how they're supposed to be doing duets, Tina saw this song, how this song kind of had a little bit of meaning for him and Quinn, and why Tina thought it'd be a good idea for them to choose it for what he's trying to show Quinn.

May listens to it all, considers it, and asks, "Was it the only song you ever danced to with her?"

"No," he answers, because there was that other one.

"Good, if it was, I think it'd be too important," May reasons. She questions, "And was this dance while you were…sort of…together?"

"Nope. It was before, when she was babysitting Kel," he responds.

May considers it for another second before deciding, "Then I agree with Tina. It wasn't a song from when you were together and it wasn't the only song that could mean something to you two so I don't think it'd be anything to be taken badly. It wouldn't be like you're pressuring her to decide to be with you or go through this situation with you because it doesn't sound like the song is that significant to your relationship. But it is significant enough to show her that while you're not pressuring her, you do want those things."

That all made sense to Puck and he had really been wanting to figure out a better way to show Quinn he would respect her being alone, but that he didn't want things to be that way. According to his mom and Tina, this was a way for him to do that and who was he to question their logic? They both knew way more about girls than him. So he decides, "Okay, let's do the song then."

They work on the song into the evening until Tina finally departs (she has another date with Artie). They decide they'll practice Monday after school and let Mr. Schue know they'll perform at club practice on Tuesday.

At the end of the day, Puck's not sure if singing this song as his duet with Tina will go over as well as Tina and his mom seem to think it will. He's made progress on proving he can be a responsible guy- actually doing his school work and obtaining the possibility of a good job- but he knows that that's not going to mean anything if Quinn never sees it or never trusts him enough again to even consider that he can do anything she needs him to, if only he'd let him be a part of all this. (If only he hadn't screwed everything up so much in the first place that she didn't want him to be involved in anything.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn's Saturday starts out well enough. She's had enough practice at getting the Cheerios to listen to her that it's not really difficult to get them to do what she wants now (especially with her authoritative tone in place). It's also easy enough to get the other Cheerios to treat Santana like the captain- after all she knew how Coach Sylvester treated her as captain, she just had to repeat that with her role reversed.

Santana (who had held up her end of the deal and treated her like she was the coach) and Brittany seemed to assume they were giving her a ride back and since she was still trying to avoid paying any cab fare or walking for such a long distance, she accepts without hesitation. Before they get out of the parking lot though, she asks, "Can you drop me at my parents instead of the hotel?"

"Why?" Santana asks. If her parents kicked her out like Quinn's did to her, she'd never willingly see them again.

"I just need to go there," Quinn says simply, not wanting to get into the whole long explanation of what she's going to do.

Santana isn't a fan of vagueness or not knowing things though. She jerks the car over to the side of the road, parks suddenly, and locks the doors. She repeats, "Tell me why or I'm not taking you."

Quinn considers her options. She would be getting paid for today so she could take a cab. But she also knows that what she'll earn will barely cover her next ultrasound if she doesn't get on Medicaid quick enough and she may not get another job soon, but she will need a lot more money so really she should save every cent she can. She could walk, but her feet already hurt from standing through nearly all of practice. So she sighs and offers the short version of what she's doing, "I need to go home because I'm going to try to blackmail my parents into letting me live with them again. I need a permanent place to stay, I don't want to inconvenience some other family who shouldn't have me as their problem, so, as much as I don't want to be around them, my parents are my best option for a continuous free roof over my head."

Santana considers it and pulls away from the curb continuing to Quinn's house with a simple, "Okay then, to your parents house it is."

They don't talk for the rest of the ride. Brittany seemed to miss the real idea of what Quinn had said and didn't seem to think it was concerning that they were dropping Quinn off at her parents house.

As they pull onto Quinn's street, Santana offers, "If it works and you need someone to help you move back in, you can call. Your parents always looked at me like I was trash. My dad may work for the city, but my mom's the best dermatologist in town."

"So what are you planning on doing if I let you help me move?" Quinn asks knowingly.

She smirks and answers, "I was thinking I'd make out with Brit in front of them or show up in a bikini or something."

She'd packed a lot of stuff when she left so the help would be nice and if Santana wanted to make her parents uncomfortable as they had done to her on many occasions, she was okay with that too. So Quinn accepts, "If this all works, I'd really appreciate the help to move back."

Santana pulls up to Quinn's house and simply says, "I'll go pick out a bikini." It wasn't exactly like "good luck" but it was a pretty nice gesture from her former competition/frenemy.

"Thanks," Quinn offers before she gets out of the car, Brittany calling a friendly goodbye adding on that she'd see her later (which she supposed meant Brittany had been following the conversation despite the fact that she hadn't seemed like she was).

Quinn approaches the house (hearing Santana's car leave in the background) and then she freezes and darts behind a tree. She doesn't feel ready for this; to step foot back in this house, to possibly live there again, to talk to her parents. She gets out her phone and hits the speed dial for her sister.

Having known Quinn's detailed plan for the day, Jessica answers knowing where her sister is and what she's about to do. She cuts right to the point and begins by reassuring, "You'll be fine. You'll go in just like you planned and lay everything out for them. If they don't do what you want, then you'll walk right back out, call me, and we'll figure out a better place for you to live. I promise."

Quinn sighs and says gratefully, "Thank you." She really needed to hear all that right now.

"No problem," Jess responds. She swears again, "Everything will be alright Quinn. Just go in there and…give 'em hell."

Quinn smiles a little at that, thanks her sister again, and hangs up. She comes out from behind the tree and makes her way to the front step. She takes off her sweater and folds it over her bag so she's in her baby-bump-emphasizing outfit (tights and a long fitted t-shirt) as she wanted to rub in the whole pregnant thing. She gets her keys out of her bag and takes a deep breath before using them and letting herself into the house.

Her mother comes out of the kitchen as she's shutting the door (she must have heard it open). Puzzled and shocked, she says, "Quinn?"

"Mom," she greets shortly. With a practiced fake smile in place, she tells her mother, "You may want to go get dad. We need to have a little family meeting. Unless you'd like me to go ahead and call the judge, reporter, and police to share the news I learned about dad with them."

Judy seems stunned and uncertain.

Well, her mom can continue to debate what to do in the foyer. Quinn's feet are more than a little sore so she tells her mom, "I'll be waiting in the living room," and leaves her mom to make up her mind.

Quinn takes a seat on the sofa her dad had sat on when he kicked her out, same center spot and everything. Thus, when her mother came in with her father a minute later they were forced into the seat across from her- the one she was in when they decided she wasn't their daughter anymore.

Her mother looks scared and her father seems just as angry as he was the last time he saw her. But this time their positions are (literally) reversed and Quinn sits primly on the couch, her hands folded in her lap, and smiles at them (her best devious/confident one).

"What is this about?" Russell demands gruffly, not even looking at Quinn.

Quinn opens her bag on the floor and pulls out what she had taken from the safe (which luckily hadn't been missed) and sets it on the coffee table between them, still smiling.

Russell seems surprised and puzzled like his wife had been. Then, he seems to realize all the possible meanings and looks up at Quinn, stunned (and maybe a little scared/horrified).

"You know, I couldn't figure out at first why you would have a corporate checkbook locked away in the not-easy-to-get-to safe. But then I realized you didn't have _the_ corporate checkbook in the safe, you had _one of your_ corporate checkbooks in the safe," Quinn explains. She leans back on the couch a little, placing a hand on her growing stomach (just to make sure to draw their attention there- even though her mom's eyes have been there a lot already). She continues, "See, all the purchases in that checkbook have been personal, but from the corporate account. And if you weren't writing them off as corporate purchases then why all the secrecy? That book only goes back as far as earlier this year, but it shows that you haven't made any moderate or big purchase in your personal life with your own money, it's all been the company's money."

She asks her mom, already knowing the answer, "Did you know dad owns a yacht? Or that he rents two apartments? One here in Lima and one in Dayton. They both have very young women living in them too."

Quinn decides to make herself perfectly clear, show them she knows what she's doing. She explains, "I have a judge and a reporter on speed dial. I could tell them some sob story about you, about how you threw me out. But you'd survive that kind of public scrutiny, you'd probably even get support for it out of it, we both know that. However, you own a publicly traded company so both the FCC and the IRS would really want to know about you spending company money on a ton of personal purchases. You'd lose the company, you'd lose your image, and you'd lose your money."

Quinn waits for them to catch on then. She's not surprised when her dad is the one to understand first.

He asks shortly, "How much do you want?"

"I don't want your money," Quinn tells him, smile finally gone. She knew it'd probably be smarter to take their money, but she wasn't sure she'd be able to live with herself knowing she was only surviving because of the money she blackmailed out of them.

"Then what do you want?" Russell asks confused (who wouldn't want money?).

"I want you to let me live here for the rest of my pregnancy. I'll find somewhere else to stay by the end of it, but right now, I need whether or not I have a roof over my head not to be a concern and I need that roof to be free. So I'd like to have my room back and I'd like a shelf in the refrigerator and use of the kitchen- other terms to be negotiated as needed. I'll stay out of your way. I don't want back in this family, I just want a place to stay," Quinn explains. They're not jumping in and objecting so she continues, "I also want my car back and I want you to fill out a paper I got and one of you to come to court with me to get the title changed to be in my name."

"Why?" Russell is quick to question, "What do you think having the title will get you?"

"I'm selling the car. I already got a local dealer to offer $33, 285 for it. I'll be using a small portion of the money to get a cheaper car and saving the rest for moving out of here," Quinn explains.

Russell's agitated by this. He paid nearly that amount for the car in the first place and now it was over six months old, been driven for six months, how the hell was she going to get that much for it? But rather than asking about that, he tries to point out a hole in her plan. "And how do you think you're going to get insurance for your new car? It's not going on ours."

"I don't need it to. I already have that all figured out," Quinn tells him with confidence. Honestly, she's lying. She hadn't figured out how to get insurance and she's pretty sure she may be driving without it for a while. But she needed to have a car so she'll just have to learn to be okay with that.

Quinn repeats what she wants for them, to make sure she's being clear, "So I want to live here for free for roughly the next six months and my car back with the title in my name and if you agree to that I won't give the judge and reporter I have on speed dial the copies of your corporate checkbook I have safely stored away." Quinn can see that both her parents are thinking it over so she announces, "I'll give you a minute to consider what you want me to do with your secret. I have to pee again anyway."

As she gets to the entrance to the living room, she realizes she forgot to tell them something she had planned on saying. "Oh," she says, turning back to them. Once she has their attention, she places a hand on her stomach and delivers with her fake smile in place, "You should know, it's a girl. And Finn's not the father. The real father's Jewish. Mazel tov!" She heads for the bathroom then because by the shock on their faces, her mission had been accomplished.

She nervously waits a few minutes in the bathroom after she's finished in there. She was hesitant to go back out because she didn't know what she'd do if this didn't work. Her sister may have promised that everything would be okay, but this was the best solution she could think of. It would take the pressure off to find somewhere to live, she could have time to get a job and add to the savings that selling her car would give her, and as awful as it would be to live with her parents again, overall it would just make things easier to have a free place to be for the next several months.

Quinn knows she can't hide forever though, so she takes a deep breath, and heads back out to the living room. She tries to make sure her armor is up as she sits back down across from her parents and asks evenly, "Do you have a decision yet?"

Her mother eyes her father like she's not sure what's going to happen.

But her father ends up questioning, "How do I know that you're not going to just give your copies to someone while you're living here or when you leave?"

"I'll give you back my copies when I'm ready to move out. You'll just have to trust that all the copies I give you are all the copies I made," Quinn tells him.

He looks completely unhappy about it, but Russell gives in, telling his daughter tightly, "Fine. You can stay. As long as you hold up your end, don't tell anyone about the checkbook and stay out of our way. And you can have your car back. Your mom will take care of the title with you. You'll get your car back tomorrow."

"Why?" Quinn's quick to question.

Surprisingly, her mom jumps in, "The car had been sitting out there for weeks collecting dust. It looked awful. So I took it in to get detailed, I dropped it off about an hour ago. I was going to get a cover for it and move it to the back to keep it from becoming an eyesore in front of the house like it was. But it'll be ready tomorrow morning. I'll take you to get it after we get back from church… or before, if you'd like."

Considering how she would need to go shopping again and every place was empty earlier, Quinn decides, "Before you go to church would be best."

Since everything seems settled, Quinn stands up and tells her parents, "I'll be back with my things later." She walks out of the house with her head held high.

Quinn walks down the block and crosses over to another street before stopping. She had been counting on having her car to get back to the hotel. She could call Santana, but she's not ready to move back in yet. She hadn't packed because it felt like by doing so she'd be getting her hopes up too much. Something good just happened though so she decides she can splurge and calls a taxi to pick her up and take her back to the hotel. While she waits for the cab, she calls her sister to let her know the good news.

Quinn packs and calls Santana to let her know that she would need her help after all. She loads her things up on two luggage trolleys (just like they had to do when she got there), checks out and gets a refund for the extra day her sister paid for and waits for Santana.

Santana arrives pretty quickly with Brittany. When they get out of the car to help Quinn put her things in, she finds herself distracted by their outfits.

Santana offers, "It was too cold to just wear a bikini."

Yet they were both still in bikini tops and shorts and very high platform heels. Quinn knows it was probably a smart choice to go with for her parents though. They treated Santana like she was trash (which they did not because of her dad's profession like she thought, but because her parents thought she was super slutty- not that her affair-happy dad should be judging anyone) and now she was going to look and act how they expected her to, to effectively throw their treatment of her back in their faces (it wasn't completely unlike what Quinn was doing with the blackmailing). Quinn and Santana weren't friends, so she knew the only reason Santana was helping her was to do whatever she had planned to make her parents uncomfortable. But Quinn appreciated the help all the same (plus, her parents did deserve whatever Santana was going to do) so she simply starts loading the car and doesn't comment on the outfits or anything else they're going to do.

What they're going to do, she finds out pretty much as soon as they get to her parents house. Santana and Brittany follow her in, not carrying any of her stuff, and proceed to make out in the foyer. As Quinn keeps passing them going from the car to her room, they keep getting…handsy-er with each other. By the time the girls realize that Quinn's parents are simply easily refraining from going into the foyer now, the display was even making Quinn a little uncomfortable with how enthusiastic it was. But, realizing their location was no longer effective, Santana decides to continue with Brittany on the front lawn- so they can give all the Fabray's neighbors a show too.

Quinn was surprised to find that her room was exactly as she left it. She thought they would have tried to erase the memory of their sinner daughter by now. She's also surprised, after bringing one of her last boxes up, that her father is standing awkwardly in her doorway.

He doesn't look at her as he asks, "I thought you said you weren't going to interfere with our lives? That display your friends are making on our lawn is interfering."

"They were my only option for a ride here since my car happens to be gone right now. And I can't control what they do. If you don't like what they're doing here, you do something about it. We both know you have no problem throwing a teenage girl off your property," Quinn retorts smartly, trying to keep her emotions in check because crying or showing how hurt she still is would only be seen as a weakness by her father.

He shuffles away seeming even more disgruntled than he's been since she showed up earlier.

Quinn sighs and heads back down to the car. She makes one more quick trip taking up her last bag and heads back downstairs. She doesn't want to put her parents out of the misery having all the neighbors see two teenage girls making out on their lawn induced, but she was done unloading the car so there wasn't any reason for them to be there anymore. She clears her throat loudly as she approaches which thankfully gets both girls' attention. She tells them, "I'm done getting my stuff back in."

"Good," Santana declares, "it was fun at first, but it was starting to get really creepy cause your dad has been like glued to that window over there watching us." Santana pointed to the window that Quinn knew was to his office.

"You didn't like that he was watching?" Brittany questions, "I thought it was hot."

Santana rolls her eyes and digs her keys out of her pocket. Before she can say that they should get going though, Brittany asks, "Quinn can I use your bathroom?"

Quinn's not sure if she should really be letting them use parts of the house she didn't asks for, so she tells her, "Sure, you can use the one in my room."

Rather than waiting in her car, Santana tags along back up to Quinn's room. As Brittany's in the bathroom, Quinn gets started unpacking.

"You should redecorate in here," Santana comments out of nowhere. "There's clearly a bunch of stuff in here your parents gave you to maintain that stupid image they wanted you to have. You should get rid of all of it. If I were you, I'd burn any reminders of them in this room," she explains.

Santana has a pretty good point. It was bad enough there was a chance she may have to see them on a daily basis after how they abandoned her when they knew she needed them most. She didn't need any reminder of them in this room. This should be her sanctuary. Though, there was one thing to change about Santana's idea. "Actually," Quinn says thoughtfully, "I should sell everything they gave me. I might as well make some money off of the stuff they bought me just because it gave me the right image. I'm going to need as much money as I can get anyway if I'm going to be moving out by the time I have the baby."

Santana doesn't respond to that. Talk of the baby or reminders that Quinn was pregnant made her uncomfortable- unless she was mocking the girl for her condition for fun.

Since Brittany is apparently taking her time, Quinn asks something she'd been wondering. "Why did you and Brit kind of sing to Finn yesterday?" she asks.

Santana snickers and answers like it should be obvious, "Cause thinking of all the guys in glee and the possible benefits of making any of them our target, Finn had the best pros. I thought it would piss off Rachel. I may like glee club, but I still don't like her." Thinking about it though, she adds confused, "She didn't really seem mad about it to me though."

"Yeah, I didn't think so either," Quinn agrees. She doesn't elaborate on how she thought that things seeming odd between Rachel and Finn may be due to how she hurt Finn so bad.

"Your toothbrush does a really good job," Brittany comes out of the bathroom commenting, which makes Quinn very glad she happened to carry a spare travel toothbrush in her purse.

"Let's finally get out of here," Santana declares.

Santana's practically all the way out the door in the span of a second as Brittany calls, "Wait." She turns to Quinn and says, "We can stay if you want. I mean, isn't it weird to be back here?"

It certainly wasn't pleasant to be back (as coming home should be), but Quinn could see it written all over Santana's face that she didn't want to stay. If their roles were reversed, she knows she'd probably feel the same. If she had the option of spending the evening with anyone, anywhere or her former competition who currently had quite a depressing life, she'd choose the first option too. (Plus she might as well get used to being here in these new circumstances considering how long she's going to be here.) So, she lets them off the hook, "You don't have to stay. I'm fine here. I'm just going to unpack, order some dinner, and go to bed early because I'm exhausted. But thank you for offering."

Santana promptly leaves and Brittany gives her a hug (and kisses her cheek- or at least she thinks that was the intent, she partially got her mouth) and then skips off after Santana.

Quinn shuts her door and proceeds to unpack her things (all the while telling herself that she's fine, she'll be fine here).

Around six she orders in from Fat Jack's Pizza. She waits for it out on the curb because she felt…odd about the possibility of her parents answering the door first or waiting inside by the door where they could easily keep an eye on what she was doing (yeah, it was stupid, she knew that). She eats in her room and spends a couple of hours continuing her research of how to get car insurance as well as looking for another car to buy as soon as she sells hers (which she's definitely doing this week).

A little past nine there's a knock on Quinn's door. It's her mother (who's eyes still stray to her stomach for half the length of any interaction). She seems uncertain of herself (of how to act/be) as she tells Quinn that she got a shelf cleaned out in the refrigerator just like she wanted and that she'll take her to get her car at nine tomorrow morning. Quinn, using the manners her mother so insistently instilled in her, replies with a simple polite, "Thank you," before returning her attention to her computer (letting her mother know the interaction was over and therefore still remaining in control with her parents- a must if she was going to continue to survive here).

Quinn calls her sister at eleven-thirty, as planned. She waited that long because she wanted to make sure her parents would be in bed and wouldn't have the chance to pass by her door and hear her talking to her sister (they were still keeping the fact that Jessica was on her side under wraps). Jessica assures Quinn that this would be a good change for her. Especially getting her car back because now she'd get to sell it and get a really useful amount of money. Quinn knows she's right. But still, just over thirty-three thousand dollars minus the cost of a cheaper replacement car and the fact that she's going to have to pay for absolutely everything in her life from now on, it doesn't seem like enough.

Jessica also reminds Quinn that she was in their parents lives on her terms now. There was no more doing the things they wanted. She was calling the shots. Things weren't the same and this would be better for her. She's in control of her life now. Quinn knows her sister is right on this too. The idea that she's in control makes her feel better about everything. It feels like she has a say in her own life again and like that somehow makes some of her stress disappear. (But still, she's worried about having to continue to deal with her parents.)

It's difficult for Quinn to get to sleep that night. On the one hand, she's in her own bed again finally and that's a comfort. On the other, she's in the bed, in the room, in the house that she was kicked out of and that makes her feel sad, hurt, and out of place (but those aren't exactly new feelings to her these days).

-o-o-o-

Both Quinn and Puck's Sunday passes uneventfully.

Quinn rides with her mom to get her car (in silence- except for her mom telling her to stay in the car while she pays, undoubtedly so the baby bump has less of a chance of being seen- even though she wore one of her lose fitting baby-doll dresses today that hid it pretty well). As soon as she's back in her car she inspects it to make sure it's in the same condition she remembered (so she can sell it for the price she hoped to). Then she heads to Save-A-Lot grocery store even though she knows Carol isn't working and can't give her a discount, but she doesn't want to order take out again tonight (and she needs a new toothbrush) so she has to go in. She spends the rest of the day doing homework and researching cars. (She tries not to run into her parents and tries to remind herself that she's perfectly fine, nothing is wrong, every time she thinks about where it is she is.)

Puck spends a good portion of the day sleeping. He gets all of his homework done, though probably not well (apparently he really shouldn't have skipped some of his classes, he was having tons of trouble catching up in German II and Chemistry). Then he spends a while on YouTube watching instructional videos on the topics Hank told him he'd need to learn (refrigeration repair, electrical repair, etc.). He thinks he follows them and is therefore somewhat optimistic that he may be able to learn the job well enough to get hired.

(Throughout the day, both Quinn and Puck almost call each other. Quinn thought she should probably tell him that she moved. Puck just wanted to check in. But every time they considered actually calling, both of them would never get past simply taking out their phone, staring at the screen for a second, and putting it away again to continue to wonder if it was the right choice.)

-o-o-o-

By lunch Monday Quinn decided she should tell Puck that she's no longer staying at the hotel, that she's back with her parents. She still didn't want to think about why he deserved to know or why he seemed to want to know where she was (that just made everything harder), but she knew she should do it.

So at the start of lunch she goes looking for him and finds him entering the choir room. Luckily, he's alone in there. He's grabbing a guitar from the corner so he doesn't notice her. "I wanted to let you know," she begins and noticing she has his attention as he's stood up and turned toward her, "I'm not at the Wingate anymore. I moved back in with my parents."

He's surprised by that, given everything. "They…like, apologized?" he inquires awkwardly because he doesn't really know how to ask if they decided that she wasn't kicked out anymore.

"No. I kind of…blackmailed my way into living with them again. I just wanted to be someplace free and easy for now so I don't have to keep worrying about where I'm going to stay," she sums up.

"Easy?" he questions, "Seriously, it's easy to be back with _your_ parents?"

"No. But it never was," she says honestly (though it did feel harder to be there now). Her reasoning is still right though, she thinks, and she doesn't want anyone to talk her out of it (it was already done, she was already back) so she continues, "I got them to give me my car back too though and that does definitely make things easier even if living there isn't the most pleasant experience."

"You must have had something good to blackmail them with," Puck comments with a smirk (he did always like how she could be a little bit evil).

"Yep," Quinn says simply with a smile, remembering how genuinely scared her father looked when he realized what she knew and what she knew she could do with it.

He finally moves from his spot near the corner where he had picked up his guitar, walking over to her casually with it in his hand as he checks, "And you're not going to tell me what it was?"

She wasn't going to tell anyone, that was part of the whole arrangement (she kept her mouth shut, they gave her what she wanted). But with Puck teasing her about it, she was tempted to just play along rather than give him her logical reason for not saying anything. So she simply smirks and says defiantly, "No."

He's tempted to go for a lot of arguments, but they barely talk at all these days so most of the ones he could use ("But you never would have found out this juicy secret if I hadn't knocked you up so I'm entitled to know") weren't appropriate.

Puck is still considering what he could say in response when Artie rolls through the back door- with Tina in his lap and laughing. "Hey guys," he greets with a smile.

He stops in front of the risers and tells Tina, "Milady, we've arrived at your destination. Please disembark the Artie Express."

Tina giggles, gets up, and kisses him goodbye.

Artie once again takes notice of the other people in the room and says, "Quinn, you should take pity on me since my new girlfriend is ditching me to practice and come have lunch with me."

"Practice?" Quinn questions before she can stop herself (she knows that she shouldn't want to know why Tina's being left with Puck, it's only trouble if she cares).

"We're doing our duet tomorrow," Tina explains simply.

"Oh," Quinn says, trying to hide her surprise, "good luck."

"Thanks," Tina replies politely (since both her and Puck saying nothing would only make the fact that he didn't say anything more obvious).

Dispelling the awkwardness of the room, Artie jokingly offers gesturing to his lap, "Hop on Quinn, lets get to lunch before all the good graffiti-ridden tables are taken."

She smiles and responds, "Thanks, but I think I'll just walk with you there."

During lunch, Artie happens to offer (she thinks he picked up on her curiosity) that Mr. Schue had originally suggested Tina and Puck work together, Tina wanted to sing something a little bit to do something for him but also to show she could handle more solo parts, and neither one of them would tell him what song they were going to do (and would it be horrible of them to go back and listen at the choir room door?).

Quinn tries not to think about her interaction with Puck or anything learned from it for the rest of the day. He was an unnecessary complication. Her and Puck- they were the past. She needed to look to the future and that was what she was going to do and what she was going to do about the baby (which she wasn't quite ready to delve into deciding).

As she laid in bed that night, Quinn realized that she spent nearly the entire day trying not to think of certain things (her parents, her current living situation, Puck, what she's going to do about the baby). She prays her life won't always be like this, won't always require this much denial to simply get through a day.

-o-o-o-

Puck is nervous as all hell.

He barely sleeps Monday night, worrying that tomorrow may not go well with Quinn. Talking to her that day had felt…uneasy, stunted, which was how all of their interactions seemed to go lately. She didn't seem to hate him (like before), but she didn't really seem to like him either (like before). He supposed maybe this nothingness was appropriate. After all, what else would "doing this alone" mean?

Puck almost chickens out of doing the duet with Tina five times throughout Tuesday. The only thing that ultimately saves him from doing so is knowing that if he did that word would get spread around glee club that he'd bitched out and The Puck didn't bitch out.

So Puck leaves his last class and heads right for the bathroom. He looks himself square in the eye in the mirror and tells himself to man-up, he's got a girl and a baby to win over. Then he makes sure his Mohawk looks as awesome as usual and winks at himself ('cause he looks hot, word).

He thought he got rid of his nerves, but apparently Tina must have picked up on them as they stood in front of everyone at the start of practice waiting for Mr. Schue to finish up an announcement about what that April woman was doing now. Before they could just start their song when Mr. Schue was done, Tina jumped in offering, "We decided to do a soul song because we were thinking along the same lines as Rachel. Who doesn't enjoy a classic soul song? Something familiar, but with a new twist in it being a duet? So…uh…we hope you enjoy."

Tina gives a nod to Puck to let him know she's done with her kind of random explanation (she was a little worried that maybe she gave Puck bad advice and the song needed another purpose) and that she's ready to start the song.

Puck glances at Quinn (middle row, far left side of the risers, on the same side as the back exit). Just a quick, eyes-finding-her-in-the-room-scan, and then he looks down at the guitar in his hands and taps the guitar to give Tina a count.

Tina started out singing (Puck coming in with the guitar about mid-way through), "These arms of mine, they are lonely, lonely and feeling blue_._"

"These arms of mine they are yearning, yearning from wanting you," Puck sings next.

Together, in harmony, they sang, "And if you would let them hold you oh, how grateful I will be."

Tina took the next bit, "These arms of mine they are burning, burning from wanting you."

Then Puck again, "These arms of mine they are wanting, wanting to hold you."

Together, they sang their hearts out on the rest of the song, "And if you would let them hold you, oh, how grateful I will be, come on, come on baby, just be my little woman (man), just be my lover, oh I need me somebody, somebody to treat me right, oh I need your loving arms to hold me tight, and I...I...I need...I need your...I need your tender lips, I need you in these arms of mine."

They added the last phrase to the song to help wrap it up and sang the whole thing with just the slightest twang (where appropriate). They sang it passionately, as it was what the song seemed to call for (and Tina was proving a point about carrying big solos and Puck was proving one to Quinn). They had stood next to each other, a few feet apart, facing the crowd and singing out (even closing their eyes for bits). Puck had tried to keep his eyes downward or shut so the intended wouldn't feel too much like his intended. But when the song quietly ends and he looks up, his eyes find hers immediately and refuse to let go.

There's clapping, a lot of it. And there's Mr. Schue coming up by them, clapping them both on the back, and saying, "Wow guys. That was fantastic. It just…leapt out at you. I think we have a serious possibility for regional's in this performance, in this song." But Puck doesn't notice any of it. He just can't help meeting her watery eyes.

Tina smiles and receives the accolades graciously, but when they all die down it becomes obvious that her duet partner did not do the same, because he's lost somewhere else, with his eyes only on one person. And with Tina taking notice of this, then Mr. Schue, then some of the audience (Kurt and Rachel seemed to notice first), it doesn't take long before everyone else is quietly watching Puck stare at Quinn who's staring back at him, both unmoving.

This is broken by Finn suddenly dashing out the side door. The door is slamming behind him before anyone realizes it was him who left. (No one had noticed how angry his expression became when he noticed why everyone stopped talking and what they were looking at.)

Everyone's heads are quickly turning from the direction of the door that Finn went out of to the other side of the room as Quinn rushes out the back door, Puck quick on her heals, taking off his guitar and tossing it haphazardly towards the empty chairs on the risers as he passes. He catches up to her right outside the door, grabbing her elbow to pull her back as he says, "Wait."

She jerks her arm out of his grasp, but doesn't continue to run. She turns around to face him, tears running down her face. (They're not happy tears, that much is readily apparent to him.) "Why did you pick that song?" she demands.

She's crying and she looks angry so he decides to go with the reason Tina supplied. "Like Tina said," he reminds, "it seemed like a good idea. What judges wouldn't like some Otis Redding? The dude's pretty popular."

She hasn't felt like she's been able to read him at all lately, but she doesn't believe him (she doesn't want to). "Don't lie to me," she implores earnestly, holding his eyes with hers.

He sighs heavily, shoulders slump, and he glances away before admitting, "Fine. Tina suggested the song and I agreed to do it…for you." He knows that may be why she's angry so he rushes on, "I know you said you want to do everything alone and I respect that, I do. I'm not trying to get you to change your mind. I just wanted you to know that I want you to. I want to be a part of all this."

That sounds really good. He sounds like the guy she was so sure he was. But she's tired of making the same mistake over and over again and getting burned every time. She shakes her head and tells him firmly (regretfully), "I can't do this with you. I just _can't_ go through all this with you."

"But you could go through it with Finn," he retorts angrily (stupidly). He knows better than to bring up the past, it's not any kinder to him than it is to her (probably even worse to him), but sometimes he's just an idiot.

Her eyes narrow at him and she warns, "Don't bring that up." She doesn't want to relive the past (or think about what she did to Finn, the wrong's she's done to so many people).

"Why? I'm right," Puck responds. He doesn't like people telling him what to do and he hates not getting what he wants for some stupid vague reason that no one will explain to him. He's manned-up, he's doing the right thing, and he's fighting for them, so why the hell does he not have what he wants?

"Yes, you are," she confirms coldly, "I could do this with Finn and I can't do this with you."

"Why not? Am I not good enough for you? Still? 'Cause that reason's getting old considering how you used it to pick Finn over me like a handful of times already," Puck spews, nearly yelling in his frustrated, enraged state, "But you can't pick Finn anymore. Whether or not you like it I'm the one you slept with and I'm her father," he says pointing at her stomach.

"And I spend every day wishing that you weren't," she cuts in crying, it coming out before she can stop herself.

Hearing that is like a punch in the face (he knows, he's been punched in the face plenty of times). He snaps his mouth shut because if he'd never gotten angry and started saying stupid things then he would have never found that out. So the idea that he really shouldn't be saying any of the stuff that he had been (that it was all just another regret) finally gets through to him.

She didn't mean that. Not the way it came out sounding at least. He seems so hurt by it and she knows that despite the fact that some of the things he said hurt, he didn't deserve to think that what she said was true when it wasn't. She tells him, "I didn't mean it like that. I just… we make a mess of things. Every time we've tried we just end up worse off and I'm living with enough consequences from everything, I don't need to add more. I can't. That's why it would be easier to go through this with anyone else or alone, because I can't take any more mistakes in my life, I can't lose anything else."

(What she meant in her talk of loss and consequences but that didn't make it into her explanation was that she couldn't get her heart broken again. Because that was what they'd done so far. She gives him another chance and her heart gets broken worse each time. And she just can't do that again.)

He can't exactly argue with that. Every time they try with each other they either both mess it up or he messes it up. And with every time they've done that they've seemed to decrease the chances of them ever being together. But he doesn't want that to happen this time. He doesn't want to mess up again. He's determined not to because he knows he can't afford to. So he tells her, "I know. I know I've messed this up and I've screwed up and I just said a bunch of stupid stuff I didn't even want to. But nothing is going to go wrong this time. I just want to be here for you and for the baby. Nothing will get messed up this time. You won't lose anything, there won't be any bad consequences. I swear."

A big part of her wants to believe him (because she's still the girl that called him and wanted to meet him alone in an orchard and who came home with him that night) just like she's believed him before. But she promised herself that she would be smarter than she had been so she can't take a chance on him, not again, not right now. Sorrowfully, she offers, "I'm sorry, but I just can't believe that."

That's not what he wanted to hear. But instead of getting angry like he did earlier, he stays silent for a second (so nothing stupid slips out) and takes time to actually think. She may not believe in him in this moment, but he'd only been trying to be the guy she deserved him to be for a little over a week. So maybe all she needed was more time, more of him proving that he really meant it when he said he wouldn't mess them up, and then maybe she'd believe in him, in them. "Okay," he accepts (surprising her), "You don't believe that giving me a chance to be a part of everything won't end up as disastrous as every other time. So you can do things alone for now and I'll respect that. But just to let you know, I'm not going to stop showing you that letting me be involved would be a good thing, that I won't mess up this time."

"I wish you wouldn't do that," she says (only half meaning it), "I told you, I can't do this."

"And I'm going to show you, you can," he cuts her off. He levels with her, offering, "I need to do this. I need to…try."

Well, she knows she can't honestly say she hates the idea of having her mind changed (if he did prove he was the guy she thought he was and not the guy who told her he wanted to see other girls in addition to her, then maybe going through all this wouldn't be so awful; she does wish she had him to lean on). Plus he seems determined on this and even if he wasn't she knows she probably wouldn't have much of a chance at changing his mine. So she accepts it simply, "Fine. I can respect that. You're going to respect that I need to do things alone and I'll respect that you need to try and make me change my mind."

That sounded kind of odd to Puck. He wasn't sure it made sense, but she was the smarter one so he didn't question it. "Okay," he agrees. Silence settles between them and Puck remembers how they got out here and started fighting/talking in the first place. Not knowing what else to say, he suggests, "I guess we should head back in there," with a gesture to the door of the choir room they went out.

Facing everyone right this minute (or at all) was not something Quinn felt like doing. She stalls (with a legitimate excuse), "Actually I should head to the bathroom to try to make myself look less like a crying mess."

It's instinct that has him reaching out before he thinks about it, stroking a bit of hair off her face and saying, "Like anything could ever make you look like a mess."

Her breath hitches when his fingertips come into contact with her hair and it does so a little bit more when his hand comes to touch her face in the course of the movement. And he's close, and touching her, and staring in her eyes (a near replica of the moment in the home economics room) and she knows that she could so easily fall back into so many things with him. But she can't. She knows she can't so she shakes all thoughts of what could happen next (if she just lingers) from her mind, pulls away, (smiles a little- she can't help that) and takes a step back as she tells him she'll be back to glee club in a few minutes, she just needs some time. She turns and heads off in the direction of the bathroom before he can say anything back.

Puck doesn't go right back to the choir room. Once she's out of sight he takes a seat on a nearby bench and tries to simply process everything. There were some really bad parts to that interaction. He said some things he knew he shouldn't of and regrets saying and it seemed like she had too. But in the end they did come to an understanding and while she didn't want to have him involved in her life at all right now, he felt pretty good about being able to change that. After all, even this conversation, as bad as it had been at parts, had been progress.

(Here's something you should know: She sees the man he's trying to be- the guy she had been convinced he was. But she's not ready to believe in the things she sees. She's made too many mistakes that way and she doesn't want to make any more.)

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**A/N: I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Thank you for reading.  
**

**Next chapter title:** ….I don't know. Sorry, but I had one planned prior to the chapter needing splitting and now, though I have some decent choices, I'm not especially crazy about the fit of any of them. So the next chapter title will have to remain a mystery until it's updated. Though, if anyone has any lyrics they think may fit the direction they think the story is going, please feel free to volunteer them- in your review, in a message, however you want.

Begging is unattractive, but here it goes anyway: **Please, please, please review! I'd so love to hear from anyone reading:D **


	13. Chapter 11

**A/N: First, as always, thank you to the many fabulous people who reviewed!**

**Second, I'm sorry that this took longer than most chapters have been lately.** There's an explanation involving a long and somewhat costly test on my profile, which I won't bore you with here.

Third, does anyone reading happen to have a twitter account? If you do, please make sure you stop by my profile. I have an experiment I'd like to try with your help.

Forth, I have the next chapter finished, but pretty much nothing beyond that so updates will get slower. I don't really have anything much to do right now though (except jury duty in a couple of weeks) so I'm hoping that updates won't get much slower, just a bit.

Fifth, speaking of the next chapter, it's going to be a long one. While this chapter is around thirty-five pages, the next will be more like fifty-five.

Sixth, this chapter's title is from the Mumford and Son's song "After the Storm."

Seventh, I hope you enjoy the chapter:D

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**Cheated Hearts

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**

_XI. Well, I'm scared of what's before and what's ahead_

(Here's something you should know: This whole experience has been teaching her a lot about the nature of people. And while some people are perfectly clear, she finds herself unable to understand what she's supposed to be learning about others.)

Back inside the choir room, Mr. Schue was surprised to find all the members of the glee club who he had dismissed huddled around the back door.

"What are you guys still doing here? I dismissed you ten minutes ago," he says semi baffled (their location did give them away).

"We know you did," Kurt says, not answering the question and instead responding to the statement.

"How was Finn?" Rachel asks as they had all assumed that he'd gone after him after he dismissed them all.

"I couldn't find him," Mr. Schue says dejectedly. It doesn't seem like anyone is really listening to him though, they're all straining to listen at the door and he had dismissed them much earlier than planned to avoid this exact thing. "Guys, you really shouldn't be listening. That's a total invasion of their privacy. How would you like it if someone did the same thing to you?" he tries.

No one's listening to him though. No one moves until Mercedes (who had been one of the people with their ear pressed against the door to hear even better) says, "Puck just mentioned to Quinn about coming back in here. Everyone get moving." She starts heading for her bag and then the front door immediately (no way was she going to get caught spying on a private conversation between two teammates who obviously already had enough to deal with).

Everyone else follows Mercedes' lead and finally stops listening and gets out of the choir room as Mr. Schue had wanted them to do. On their way out, Mr. Schue asks Rachel to follow him to his office as he has a task for her as captain.

And that's how Puck came back in to the choir room to find it empty save for his guitar and backpack. (Quinn's things missing, but then he supposed that maybe she hadn't brought anything with her, not everyone did.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn tells herself firmly that she is done crying. There will be no more crying for her for the rest of the day. If that goal is going to be accomplished though, then she knows she can't think about Puck or anything to do with the song or the conversation for the rest of the day. She's feeling very emotional at the moment (she wonders if it's because of the pregnancy) and she knows that if she gives him the slightest thought she'll likely burst into tears. So, she'll just have to keep herself distracted- something she's usually pretty good at.

She starts by cleaning herself up. She runs a paper towel under cold water and leaves it on her eyes for a minute to try and de-puff them. She knows that she should head back to glee, but the idea of doing that at the moment makes her feel like she's already going to break her goal of not crying. So, she takes a seat on the bench that happens to be in this particular restroom (despite the fact that it doesn't seem entirely clean) and tries to focus on her breathing and shut everything else out.

Just as her mind starts to venture away from concentrating on her breathing, she hears the door to the bathroom open and sees Kurt poke his head in. Upon seeing her he enters without hesitation. He holds her bag out to her (he grabbed it from the floor of the choir room on his way out) and tells her, "Glee club got out early so come on, you're coming to my house."

She takes her bag from him and sets it down next to her. It's a nice offer, but she checks her watch and says, "Thanks, but I can't. I have Cheerio practice in ten minutes."

"Cheerio practice?" he asks with a raised eyebrow.

"I'm subbing for Coach Sylvester," she explains.

"Cheerio practice sans Sylvester, I'll come with," Kurt suggests, seeming excited about the idea, "Then you'll come over to my house, we'll hang out and you can join me and my dad for dinner. You can help me try to persuade him into going to parent's night this Thursday." Since Quinn is clearly hesitating, Kurt adds, "Come on. It'll be fun. And after the day you've had, it seems like some fun could do you good rather than going back to your insufferable parents."

Well when he puts it like that the choice seems clear. Plus, hanging out with Kurt should be a good distraction from her thoughts, which may enable her to meet her goal of not crying for the rest of the day. She accepts with a smile, "That sounds great. Thank you."

She stands up and grabs her bag so they can head out to the field.

He holds the door open for her as he inquires, "So can I critique the Cheerios or would you rather I just watch? Because I've been watching their performances for a little over two school years and I definitely have some thoughts."

Kurt's advice throughout practice is occasionally helpful, but mostly seems to just be his attempts to make her laugh- which work and she appreciates. After practice she follows him back to his house. Kurt's home is much cleaner than Quinn expected- just two men living there alone and all (she thought it'd be a man cave)- and very warm. Oddly enough though, he doesn't live in the house, instead he (with the help of his father) converted the basement into his own loft style "apartment." They hang out down there for a while, watching TV and talking (and doing some homework because she has grades to maintain). It's nice. She thinks that she and Kurt may be real friends now.

A little before six, heavy foot steps stomp down the stairs and a voice calls with them, "Kurt, what the hell is this text about that you sent me? "I'm bringing my BM to dinner? Huh?" It's then that he looks up and sees that his son is not alone in the basement and oddly enough it's a girl he's with.

Kurt stands up from the couch and says seriously, "Dad, I have a confession to make. A little while back I decided to make sure I was indeed gay and well, now Quinn here is pregnant. BM, stood for baby mama."

Burt, straight-faced, simply glances over at Quinn and then back at his son and comments, "At least she's pretty."

"Head cheerleader too," Kurt throws in.

"Good job son," he say, clapping his son on the shoulder. Then he throws over Kurt's shoulder, "Nice to meet you Quinn. Dinner will be ready around seven- probably earlier if you two decide to help me with it." With that Kurt's father is marching back up the stairs.

Quinn is terribly confused. First she was mortified that Kurt was claiming responsibility for her condition to his father and then, with his lack of a reaction, she became utterly baffled. Seriously, what was going on here? "Kurt," she begins.

He jumps in as he sits back down next to her before she can continue, "Oh don't worry about that. We were just joking around. As if I would ever have sex with a girl to make sure I like boys. No offense, but the thought sickens me. I was just teasing my dad- we've joked about how me being gay means I'd never end up getting a girl pregnant."

He adds on as an after thought, "And he totally knows who you are already. Gossiping is one of the few activities my father and I both enjoy. Though he'd never call it gossiping- he just thinks he's telling me about what's new with the guys at the garage, but when you're discussing the private lives of others it's totally gossiping, right?"

Quinn simply nods her agreements. Well, at least she wouldn't have to explain her situation or answer any questions about it (or ignore it because he was too polite to do any of those things). So she sighs and checks, "Should we help your dad with dinner then or was he joking still?"

"No it really does go faster if he has a hand. He's not one for especially simple cooking," Kurt says as he rises from the couch once again and leads the way to the kitchen.

Kurt wasn't lying about his father- the man wasn't preparing a simple meal and this seemed to be a very regular thing for him. He was just slipping some bruschetta into the oven when they got upstairs and he had a well of flour formed on a bread board. He was making chicken breasts stuffed with spinach, parmesan cheese, and a little pancetta, fresh pasta to be tossed with butter, a little lemon, parmesan cheese, asparagus, garlic, and peas. He was also making a salad, chunky cinnamon apple sauce, and the mushroom bruschetta to go along with it. It seemed elaborate for three people, but by the way Kurt and his father talked and went about tasks in the kitchen with ease, Quinn guessed that this was a very regular type of dinner for them. Plus, later, Burt mentions how he eventually took up cooking after Kurt's mom passed- he figured he should be feeding Kurt something better than microwave meals.

Burt is very nice. As he sets Quinn up with easy tasks he asks her questions about her classes. He doesn't stare at her growing stomach. He doesn't avoid the topic of her pregnancy either (as most people do), instead he manages to talk about it like it's not some shameful thing considering her age. He asks her questions about how she's been feeling and tells her things about Kurt's mom's experience being pregnant (apparently she wanted to have a lot of kids, but it took them over a year of trying before Kurt was conceived and then they didn't get lucky with another pregnancy before she passed). He also asks her some sports related questions because apparently he was curious if the cheerleaders ever learned anything about the sports they were cheering for.

By the end of dinner, Quinn finds that she's been having a genuinely great time. There's something very easy about talking to Kurt and Burt. They seem to have a very open and understanding relationship and it made the environment of their home comfortable. It was like spending the evening with very close old friends though she had just met Burt and didn't really know Kurt that well yet.

Eventually, it dawns on Burt that his son had mentioned that Quinn got her car back and putting that together with the other car parked in front of their house he asks, "Wait, is that your 2009 GT Mustang convertible out there?"

"Yes," Quinn answers.

He lets out a whistle and comments, "That's a _really _nice car."

"Thanks," Quinn says politely, "I'm hoping someone else will think that. I'm trying to sell it."

"Sell it? Why would you want to sell it? Are you getting a better care?" Burt asks (getting slightly excited about the idea of a car better than the one parked out in front of his house).

"Hopefully I'll be getting an okay, but much cheaper car so I can keep the rest of the money for when I'm out of my parents house again," Quinn explains.

Quinn can see that Burt isn't quite connecting all the dots and Kurt jumps in to fill in some of the information he hadn't gotten around to telling his father (last night was Monday night football, they didn't really talk), "I told you Quinn was back with her parents and she got their by blackmailing them. She got them to throw in the title to her car on top of the whole getting to move back in."

Burt's still confused so even thought it may not be proper or whatever for him to ask, he questions, "Yeah, I got that, but I thought that you being back with your parents meant… you were back with your parents. You're going to be leaving their place again though?"

"I can't stay there with them after…" Quinn trails off (because she doesn't know what she means by after yet- after she has the baby and gives it away or after she has the baby and needs a better place than her parents house to bring her home to). She moves on, hoping that she was making sense, "So I only used the information I got to allow them to let me live there for the rest of my pregnancy, but then I'll be completely on my own again. I'm pretty much on my own now. I had to apply for Medicaid and I'm looking for a real job and federal assistance. But it seems unlikely that I'm going to get hired anywhere while I'm pregnant so I'm really, really going to need someone to buy my car for the blue book price." (When Quinn had told her parents she already had a dealer offer her $33,285 for it, she was lying. That was actually the amount she should get based on its current value but she hadn't found anyone interested in buying it yet.)

"That's a real smart idea," Burt compliments (because one, he thought she could use a compliment, and two, he was sure that if he was in her position he never would have thought to blackmail his parents for the title of his car so he could sell it and make money, it was impressive). He says thoughtfully, "You know, I meet a lot of guys who are really into cars, thanks to working at the garage, and any of them may be interested in adding such a nice car to their collections. I'll give them all a call and see if they'd want to take a look at it."

"Really? That would be great. I would really appreciate that," Quinn says gratefully.

Burt smiles and tells her, "I'll get right on that tonight." Then he hesitates, but suggests, "You know though, I could probably sell them on a car better if I had…driven it."

"Dad," Kurt chides, because sometimes his dad seemed like the indulgent kid and he seemed like the adult.

"Sure," Quinn agrees immediately over Kurt's protest (apparently he didn't like his dad asking his friend for a favor or something). She pulls her keys out of her pocket and tells him, "Take it out for as long as you'd like. It's the least I can do after you having me over for this wonderful meal."

"See dad, this is why you shouldn't have asked," Kurt huffs, "you made her feel like she has to pay you back for her being here and-"

"That's not true," Burt cuts in. He looks at Quinn and tells her earnestly, "Quinn, you're welcome here any time. For dinner, to hang out, to spend the night- we've got a spare room that Kurt went all Martha Stewart on. Really, there's no need for you to do anything in return. We're always happy to have a woman keep us company- it's a nice change for us." He looks down at the keys in his hand and smiles, "So you never owe us anything, but I'm not going to pass up a chance to drive your car."

"Dad," Kurt says exasperatedly.

"It's a Mustang GT, Kurt! When am I ever going to get the chance to drive a new Mustang GT again in my life?" Burt points out.

"Fine," Kurt relents and adds craftily, "But for embarrassing me for overreacting about my friend's car and taking advantage of her kindness, you have to come to parents night."

Burt whines, much like a teenager, and complains, "But I hate those stupid things. They're always trying to make you socialize with all the other parents and all those people want to talk about is their boring kids. Plus, I have my bowling league that night."

"Don't you see how it would be embarrassing for me to have my father ask to borrow a friends car though? So if you just embarrassed me it seems like a fair trade that you endure an hour of people you don't like so I get extra credit in some classes I really need it in for you showing up," Kurt argues (though, Quinn thinks, he looks quite mischievous).

"Fine, I'll go. For the sake of your grades, I'll go," Burt gives in. He adds on as he stands up to head for the door, "If you bring anyone else home with a cool car though be prepared for something else you want to trade cause I'll be asking them to drive there's too."

Burt is happily out the door as Kurt simply shrugs.

"I have a feeling I've missed something," Quinn says thoughtfully, "because it really wasn't a big deal that your dad wanted to drive my car. I wouldn't think you're so easily embarrassed."

"I'm not," Kurt answers honestly as he stands up and starts to clear the dishes from the table, "I just realized I could use it as leverage. It's lucky you currently drive a car my dad loves other wise I'd still be looking for a way to get him to skip bowling and go to parent's night."

"How much extra credit are you getting for him to go and why do you need it so bad?" Quinn questions following him into the kitchen with a handful of dishes. She'd never heard of anyone offering more than a few points of extra credit for their parents coming to one of those lame parent's nights.

"None," Kurt says with a smirk, "I want him to go to meet a woman."

"You're trying to set him up?" she exclaims surprised.

"It's been eight years and I'm going off to somewhere fabulous for college. I don't want to leave him here all alone and I graduate in less than two years so he's got to start dating at some point," Kurt explains. "Besides," he adds with his smirk back, "this woman happens to be perfect for him."

"Who is it?" Quinn asks urgently as she begins rinsing off the plates.

Kurt makes another trip to the table, brings the platter with the rest of the chicken on it back in as he begins, "Well, last weekend I stopped by Finn's because his garage is packed with stuff- some vintage clothing included. Mercedes and I decided that we should dress up for our duet."

"What are you doing?"

"Love Will Keep Us Together'- but it'll be more like it's performed by Tennille and Beyonce rather than the Captain and Tennille. We got the jazz band to back us too- that's why we had to wait until Thursday, they couldn't perform it sooner," Kurt divulges and digresses from the original topic. Getting back to his juicy match making, he offers as he puts the leftovers away, "Anyway, while I was at Finn's Mrs. Hudson happened to ask Finn to make sure he checks the date of parent's night- apparently she's pretty concerned about his grades so she wanted to meet his teachers. And, though I by no means know Carol well, I think she'd be perfect for my dad."

Quinn hopes the look on her face doesn't give her away. Kurt had been very nice so he didn't deserve her doubting his motives (it was just hard not to when his crush was so obvious).

Kurt, however, knew he'd be running into that look from people if this match making of his actually worked. He offers, "I'm not doing this because of Finn. Would it be nice to be friends with my crush? Yes. And that's so not going to work with my other one because I'm pretty sure Joshua Jackson's never been to Ohio. Finn's straight and I'm sure in time what I know as his oafish charm will wear off and just be annoying. Anyway, what would really be nice would be to one, be friends with the most popular guy in school, and two, be friends with a straight guy so that the others don't ostracize me as much, hopefully."

"Besides," he continues getting back to the point, "Carol really could be perfect for my dad. They're stuck in the same style fashion wise, they listen to the same music, they both enjoy watching sports, and they both know what it's like for the person they loved to die unexpectedly and be left to raise a child alone."

Quinn considers what Kurt said and offers, "I think you're right. I don't know your dad very well, but I did live with Carol for a bit and I do think they'd have a lot in common. The way they treat people, the way they treat me, it's something the have in common. They're both kind and understanding."

Kurt, eyes down on the counter he was wiping off, admits, "That's something I was looking for in someone for my dad. Kindness and understanding. If she's going to be with my dad and…accept me, then she'd have to be both those things. And unfortunately not everyone is."

It dawns on Quinn here that she has a lot in common with Kurt. The cruel judgment of others was something that she had only been facing in recent months, but Kurt had been putting up with it much longer. She feels awful that she didn't realize it sooner, that Kurt hadn't just been nice to her because majority of others weren't. He hadn't taken pity on her solitude and decided to be nice. He didn't have a lot of people willing to be nice to him in return, willing to be his friend. And the fact that she wasn't being the bitchy cheerleader she once played and was nice to him was why he tried to change them from acquaintances to friends. She decides that if they could both use friends, then no matter how many other things she's going to have to deal with in coming months, she's going to be a real friend to Kurt.

Burt interrupts her thoughts coming through the door with an excited, "Woohoo! That car is awesome!" He joins them in the kitchen and slides Quinn's keys across the kitchen island to her as he says sincerely, "Thanks for letting me take her out."

"Anytime," Quinn responds.

"Come on," Kurt says, grabbing her hand and tugging her away from the kitchen, "I have the entire series of _Dawson's Creek_ on DVD and Mercedes refuses to watch them with me. She says it's because of the lack of diversity in the show, but actually she just refuses to watch anything in which she doesn't find any of the guys attractive and she's not a fan of the Creek guys."

"Isn't it board game night?" Burt asks.

"It's Tuesday," Kurt answers.

"Oh right. Thought we were already on Wednesday for a minute," he realizes. He sighs and tells them, "Well, enjoy that…Creek. I'll make those calls Quinn and let you know if they turn anything up."

"Thank you," she says again.

Quinn spends a few more hours at Kurt's house. Watching _Dawson's Creek_ with him and (again, for the same reason as earlier) doing homework. On her way out (just after ten), Burt lets her know that no one said they definitely wanted the car, but a few of the guys he knew did sound interested in it or knew someone they thought may be interested so he'd give her a call if any of them called him back wanting to see the car, which he expected at least a couple of them should. He seemed like an optimistic guy though so though she was grateful she knew she should probably make sure she pursued other ways of trying to get it sold as well.

When she gets home, Quinn is surprised to see that her parent's bedroom light is still on (and that it turns off after she's been in the house for about ten minutes- if she didn't know better, she'd think they were waiting to make sure she came home).

As she tries to fall asleep that night, Quinn realizes it was a really nice night. Burt and Kurt were so warm and nice. Technically their family was incomplete, given the loss of Kurt's mom, but it didn't feel that way. It felt like they had a real family- the kind where they have traditions and talk and like being around each other (the kind she wished she had)- and that they managed to do so with a member being missing was inspiring.

If she kept the baby….no, she can't think about that yet. She's just not ready.

She runs a hand over her stomach and whispers to her daughter, "I'm sorry. I just don't know what to do yet."

She feels her eyes tearing up, rolling down the sides of her face on to her pillow, as she continues, "And today your father just made everything harder. I _wish _I could believe him. I don't want to do all this alone. But I can't make any more mistakes. I've already messed up my life and a lot of other peoples. I don't want to hurt anyone else. And I can't get hurt again. I can't let you get hurt either. And what if he only wants us right now? What if I change everything again and then he stops wanting us? What if you're here then and he breaks your heart? I don't think he'd do that, but I've been wrong about him too many times before. I just can't risk so much on him again."

Quinn wipes away her tears and shakes her head. She doesn't know what she was doing. She shouldn't be doing this- talking to the baby. What if she ends up having to give her up? What if that's what's going to be best for her? Then it'll only hurt more if she's more attached to her because she got in the habit of talking to her. So she tells herself this was the only time she'd ever let that happen.

She sighs heavily and turns over in her bed. She closes her eyes and (as was common) she sees herself back in the hallway and Puck telling her that he hadn't slept with her in a while and he had needs so if she wasn't going to do that for him he'd just go to someone else. She snaps her eyes open. She can't forget that moment and she can't forget how much it killed her. She didn't even really care about the fight they had the night after they slept together. She made mistakes then too so she could forgive the hurt there. But thinking that he wanted them only to find out two days later that it had all meant nothing to him was something she couldn't forget and she couldn't forgive just because he'd been trying to show her he wanted them again for a week and a half now. So she decided to be smart and careful with her heart and their daughter's potential future this time. Puck could continue to try and prove that he was serious about them this time, but unless she came to truly, undoubtedly believe him (or _until_) she knew it would be best for her if she kept her distance as much as possible.

-o-o-o-

Puck's Tuesday didn't get better. He went home and as soon as he opened the door he was hit with a water balloon, only to realize seconds later that it had left a stain on his clothes. The food coloring made sense now; he really should have seen that coming.

Then, since his mom had been in on what he did today, he got to explain to her how the song went and everything that happened (or didn't- because a big part of him still felt like he was in exactly the same place). She tried to be optimistic after he told her anything, but he could tell she was struggling to come up with a positive spin for the day. He's mush less optimistic though and warns her not to count on the whole her meeting Quinn thing to happen this weekend because he wasn't sure she was really speaking to him enough to arrange that.

Finally, his day ended with bunches of homework- a lot of which he didn't understand.

Wednesday started out promising because at least it meant Tuesday was over.

Tina finds him at his locker during morning break (Artie in tow) and offers, "I'm so sorry about yesterday. I really didn't think that would happen."

"It's fine," he tells her, digging through his locker to find the chemistry homework he shoved in there earlier, "It could have been worse- it's been way worse before."

Tina exchanges a look with Artie because that was sort of new information and kind of depressing.

"At least you guys sounded really good," Artie says trying to be optimistic.

"Yeah," Puck agrees as he finally finds his homework. Rather than lifting up the books it's stuck under, he gives it a good yank and accidentally sends his open notebook flying back at Artie.

It hits Artie in the arm and he manages to catch it before it falls to the ground.

"Sorry about that. Got away from me," Puck apologizes.

"It's cool," Artie returns and he glances at the notebook before holding it out to Puck. He offers, "Uh, none of that looks right."

"I know. I spent like an hour on it yesterday but apparently I suck at chemistry because I still don't understand it at all," Puck explains as he takes it back.

"I could help you," Artie offers without giving it a thought. Sure Puck had been his tormentor on a number of occasions, but he fully believed that people changed and that people were basically good. Plus, Quinn turned out to be really nice and if she ever saw anything in Puck then their had to be something good about him. Since Puck isn't immediately accepting the offer, Artie adds, "I'm really good at science. I got an A in chemistry last year and I'm in AP chemistry this year- I have an A in it too."

Puck has never liked the idea of people helping him. But he's had to get over his pride and ask for help a few times recently and given the situation he's in with Quinn and the baby, he knows he's going to have to get used to asking for and accepting help. He needs to bring all his grades up so he graduates and so he can have a work permit. So he decides, "I could actually really use some help. Thanks."

They decide that they're both free after school today so they might as well just meet then. Also, Puck can't pay him for his time, but he wants to do something. Artie assures him that he'll figure out a way he could repay him eventually.

So Puck gets tutoring from Artie after school. They spend a couple of hours working at it and it did help. Puck got his homework done and some extra credit and he understood it. They decide to work out a more consistent schedule later since their was no point arranging one now as they had the following week off for Thanksgiving.

Puck comes home to find his mom already putting dinner on the table. "Isn't it a little early to eat?" he questions.

"You and Kel can eat whenever you want, just heat it up. But I'm eating now because I have a meeting in a bit," May answers as she fixes herself a plate and sits down.

"I didn't think you had therapy or AA on Wednesdays," he comments as he digs through the fridge for something to drink.

"I don't, I'm meeting with Mr. Berry," she answers as she reads the paper and eats her dinner.

Puck's attention is drawn away from the fridge. He stands back up and turns around to look at her confused. "Mr. Berry as in one of Rachel's dads?" he asks.

"Yeah," May confirms.

"Why?"

May puts down her paper and asks, "I had this conversation in front of you, how do you have no idea what's going on?" When Puck simply shrugs she sighs and explains, "I was looking through our finances last weekend while Tina was here. I've been trying to figure out how much we could afford to contribute to Quinn and the baby. Anyway, Tina saw my frazzled state at the mess of papers and said that her dad uses Mr. Berry- the black one, not the Jewish one- for their finances. He's actually an accountant, but he does a lot of financial planning too. I think Rachel had mentioned that too, but that girl talks so fast it's hard to follow her. Anyway, I called him and he agreed to help me out."

"That's great," Puck offers though he really doesn't understand how this is supposed to be helpful, but if his mom thought it was a good idea and it was working out he supposed it was a good thing.

"Yep," May agrees. She continues eating and tells him, "And it means you get to watch Kelyn tonight. Try to get that food coloring back from her."

Damn. That was going to be difficult.

The rest of Puck's night goes okay enough. He really should stop encouraging Kelyn to be crafty because it only seems to make keeping tabs on her more difficult (it took him hours to get the food coloring back). Then he flies through his homework as doing it regularly had made getting it done easier and easier each night (with the exception of chemistry, which he had gotten done with Artie).

Then it's Thursday. The school day passes typically enough. Rachel comes up to him and requests that he stay after the extra glee club meeting they're having after school tomorrow (since they'll be off the whole following week) as she has important glee-related things to discuss with him. Then Kurt and Mercedes do a pretty funny rendition of "Love Will Keep Us Together" at glee club after school. Mr. Schue drones on for a while about what their possibilities are for a duet in their regional's performance (his and Tina's being seriously considered among them) and finally lets them go for the day.

As he gets in his truck to leave school Puck's surprised to get a call from Hank. Apparently he didn't think the few hours he had free on Saturday (which, he should come over from one to three) would be enough time for Puck to demonstrate whatever he learned in his woodshop classes. So, Hank says that he's free now if Puck wants to stop by and get to work. Puck accepts since he doesn't have anything else going on really and he knows he probably shouldn't turn the only guy offering him a shot at a job down for anything.

Puck manages to find Hanks house fairly easily based on the directions. It's an old, large two-story house that looks like it was excellently maintained.

Hank is unloading stuff from his truck to his garage when Puck pulls up. Once Puck is out of his car, Hank says, "Good. You found it okay. That helps for this kind of work where you're always working somewhere different- a good sense of direction." He drops a toolbox off in the garage and tells him, "Come on back, I've got everything you'd need in my shed."

Puck follows him and thinks about how creepy that could sound if the context was different. "Follow me to my shed," just sounded like a line from a bad horror movie. But Hank's back yard was really nice and the "shed" looked more like a small house to Puck. It was pretty big, pretty nice, but then that did seem appropriate considering the kind of work Hank did and needed it for.

Hank takes a while to show him around, making sure he knows where everything he could need is and finally simply tells him to get to work.

"What do you want me to make?" Puck asks urgently, confused about what exactly he's supposed to be doing here.

"Anything," Hank challenges, "whatever you think shows off what you can do enough for me to keep giving you a chance at a job."

That didn't really clear things up for Puck. He took direction fine but thinking on his own wasn't a strong suit for him. He takes several minutes to consider what he should do, takes a look at what's available for him to work with, and finally decides to just dive into starting something.

He finds Hank a couple of hours later tinkering in his garage and tells him he needs to head home (homework and stuff still need to get done and besides, he's halfway through the chair he started anyway). Hank simply says that he'd seem him Saturday.

Puck's on his way to his truck before Hank calls to him, "Just to let you know, that hair cut makes you look like a punk. I don't have a dress code for any of my guys but this is a job where you frequently work in peoples' homes and people don't generally like to let a punk into their homes. Just something for you to think about."

Puck gets in his truck and starts driving home. Initially, he wrote off what Hank said on his way out. Old guys tended to think The Hawk was stupid. But then he starts to really think about his Mohawk. When he first got it had been a symbol of his badass-status, which was why kept it for nearly five years now too. But was a badass who he wanted to be now? Or more importantly, was it who he needed to be? Honestly, he did still want to be a badass, but before he even got home he realized that it wasn't the identity he wanted most, it wasn't the one he needed. He decides to make a detour. Going home would have to wait just a little bit longer.

-o-o-o-

Quinn's Wednesday is pretty uneventful (which is honestly a nice change). School passes by typically as do both Cheerio practices. After the afternoon practice she heads to the city library to get homework done (because she'd still rather spend as much time out of her parent's house as possible). Then she heads home when it's her turn in the kitchen (she had made a schedule for her parents), fixes herself dinner, and eats in her room as she watches TV. She does more homework, takes pictures of all the things in her room she wants to sell, lists them on craigslist, and goes to bed early.

Thursday is weirder than Wednesday and not just because Kurt and Mercedes dressed up and had a dance routine to their performance in glee club that involved Mercedes lifting Kurt.

It started with Artie. She had been hanging out with him around school more and more often so she wasn't surprised when he was suddenly escorting her to her third period class. What was odd was his random mentioning of the fact that he's tutoring Puck. Followed by Artie commenting, "He really seems to want to do better. He's trying really hard." Quinn's sure that he wasn't just talking about the tutoring but she doesn't want to discuss this so she simply changes the subject.

Then, on her way to her fourth period class, Mike and Matt smile at her as she passes them in the hallway. They're nice guys who are always friendly to her despite how the majority of the school has been treating her. The smiles aren't unusual, but there's something about them this time that doesn't seem normal to Quinn. They seem…knowing, but knowing of what she has no idea.

Finally, towards the end of lunch as she's getting things from her locker, Rachel approaches Quinn.

"Quinn," she begins brightly, "given that your pregnancy has put you on the outs with your family I realized that you must not have anywhere to spend the upcoming holiday and I'd like to invite you to spend Thanksgiving with me and my dads."

Quinn had been trying to be nicer to people in general or at least stay completely out of their lives so she doesn't give anyone a reason to dislike her more (she has enough people that hate her, she doesn't need anymore), but her and Rachel weren't friends. So far they weren't anything more than two people who were in the same school club. So where this sudden invitation came from, she had no idea, but this was Rachel and she always had an objective. Trying to figure out what that may be Quinn points out, "I don't think Finn would like it if you had me over."

Rachel loses her determined smile and admits (as if still trying to convince herself she was right), "I don't care." Cryptically, she continues, "He made his choice. What I do shouldn't matter to him." She brightens up again adding, "Besides, I still feel awful for using your concern for your baby against you and I still need to do something to make up for that. My dads are great, you'll love them. And I promise our Thanksgiving traditions don't include me singing. But we do have enough traditions to last all day so if you came it'd keep you out of your house for the entire day."

Quinn sighs. She hadn't thought about what next week would be like. She knows her sister won't be coming, given her horribly broken leg in all. (Plus she had yet to mention the leg to their parents and simply said she'd be spending the holiday with her husband's family.) She also knows that her parents will be having the Davis' over- long time family friends who's kids were grown and would be spending the holiday elsewhere. She knows she's not invited to join them and that it would be the last place she'd want to be- in a house with two sets of adults who wish she'd just go away (the Davis' were exactly like her parents). So she does need somewhere to go and not a lot of places are going to be open on a holiday. She checks, "Are you sure you can invite me? Do your dads know you're inviting me?"

"Yeah, they were excited about it. They love having company," Rachel answers instantly. She thinks she's almost won Quinn over so she tells her, "You know, if you don't agree now I'll just pester you all day tomorrow and I'll call you each day of break and if you still haven't agreed by Thanksgiving then that morning I'll show up at your house to try and drag you to mine. So-"

"I'll come," Quinn says, cutting off the endless rant Rachel started down. Really, she doesn't have anywhere else to go and she appreciates that Rachel realized that and was nice enough to offer her a place to be. She says sincerely, "Thank you for inviting me."

"You're welcome," Rachel responds politely. She smiles and says, "And now to show me your gratitude you can do something for me that I really need you to. And it will be good for you too- I think."

She should have seen that coming more than she did. "What?" Quinn questions.

"When he gave you back your things from his house Finn included his DVD of the baby's sonogram and I'd like you to bring it to school to give it to me tomorrow so I can use it to bribe Puck into having a short sit-down with Finn so they can resolve their issues enough to make glee club less uncomfortable. I can tell him he can either keep the DVD or that it's just a loan, whatever you'd prefer. If you're okay with him having it at all that is, which I'm really hoping you are because otherwise I'm a bit stuck for leverage," Rachel rambles very quickly.

That was a lot to take in, in the under-a-minute Rachel managed to say it in. It would be nice if glee club was less tense (the way it was now, it felt like a constant reminder of all the things she'd done wrong) and even if a sit-down seemed like a bad idea, Rachel tended to get what she wanted. She had forgotten the DVD was among the things Finn returned. She knew she shouldn't be watching it so she tried to forget about both copies that existed. (She knew that if she watched it she'd just get more attached to a baby that she'll likely have to give up.) Puck had never seen their daughter though and it was his too, he did deserve to see it. So she decides, "I'll have it for you tomorrow morning and if he cooperates with you, you can tell him he can keep it."

Rachel smiles, satisfied that she got everything she wanted out of this interaction. She tells Quinn she'll see her later and she's off to accomplish more tasks.

After glee club after school Quinn decided not to make her library detour and went straight home- opting to avoid her family and forget about being in her parents house instead by taking a nap. However, when she got home she encountered weird occurrence number four of the day.

Quinn couldn't get the twenty feet from the entrance to the stairs before her mother (who had barely said more than two simple sentences to her in the slightly over five days she'd been back) started talking to her. "Quinn, a bill came today from the health insurance company. It says that we were charged from a clinic in Kenton-"

"I'm going to pay you back when I sell my car. I applied for Medicaid so this won't happen again, I just needed to use it that once," Quinn interjects hoping that it resolved the situation. She quickly figured that maybe they couldn't complain about it too much if she paid them for it. (But she wasn't clear on how it managed to get charged to them. She had told the nurse not to do that, but then again the woman did seem like someone who took matters into her own hands and had seemed to think her parents would deserve something like this. She hadn't wanted it at the time, but at this point she really doesn't care if she has to pay a bill she had sent to Mr. Schue's address or if she has to pay her parents back.)

"Oh, no," Judy says quietly and blinking in confusion. She swallows and starts again, "I didn't mean…You don't need to do that. As you've learned your father doesn't pay attention to what goes on with our own money. I was just going to pay it. And any other charges that show up on our insurance. I can…your father won't notice if you stay on through the…birth. He insisted we vote against the creation of Medicaid a while ago, he can pay for that decision by paying for you a while longer."

Paying for your sixteen year old daughter's health insurance wasn't exactly a saintly act, but Quinn knew that it could take a while (past the birth maybe) before her application is approved and she actually gets Medicaid. So she offers a small, "Thank you."

Quinn continues her path to the stairs (her mother hadn't been looking at her, she assumed this interaction was over), until her mom calls questioning, "Was there something wrong?" Quinn turns back to her mother and Judy continues, "You went to a clinic and it didn't read like it was a regular appointment. I just thought…" she trails off suddenly not sure if she should be talking about this (or caring anymore after her husband's decision). She clears her throat and finishes, "Were you okay?"

"Yes," Quinn answers simply. She doesn't owe her mother any more of an explanation, but she can see that she's concerned despite the fact that she knows she's not supposed to be. Although, Quinn briefly thinks bitterly, if she was really concerned she'd tell her father that he was wrong and make him let her be a part of their family again. If she doesn't have to lose both parents though, she doesn't want to. So rather than saying anything bitter, she does offer more of an explanation, "I had slipped and fell and I wanted to make sure everything was okay. I figured the doctor I saw for my first appointment might be more expensive and I didn't really like the people there anyway so I went to the clinic."

"I've heard good things about a new female doctor in town, Dr. Massey. You should look into going to her," Judy suggest as if she was recommending a hair stylist to a friend at the country club and not an OBGYN to her teenage daughter. Then she adds, her usual façade falling yet again, "You should go soon and frequently. The women in my family have had some bad luck with pregnancies having complications. The doctors told me it's not genetic, but still…"

Quinn nods in understanding (she was never told everything, but she remember overhearing mentions of sisters, cousins, and aunts of her mother having a miscarriage). She had been planning on looking up doctors, deciding on one this weekend, and calling to schedule an appointment next week for whenever she could get in. Now, after remembering their family history and since her mom actually mentioned something about it when she knew that Russell wouldn't be happy that they were talking at all said a lot. She offers, "I'll look her up and call her office today. I wanted to get another appointment before winter break anyway."

Judy smiles a little and since she doesn't say anything else Quinn assumes the conversation is really over this time. She heads for the stairs (wishing that if her mom stopped her again, she'd just give her a hug) and she's not all that surprised when she reaches the top of them and her mother hasn't said anything else.

She looks up the doctor her mother suggests and calls and makes an appointment (can't get in until the Tuesday after Thanksgiving). Then she takes the nap she had been planning on, spends a while on the phone with her sister (as was routine), eats some leftovers, does her homework, and responds to a couple of questions from people interested in buying some of the things she listed on craigslist.

Despite the routine end to the day, it had been an odd day. There were too many mentions of Puck and the baby to keep the future off of her mind even if Quinn really wasn't ready to think of everything yet. She supposes that she should probably start diving in to all of it though. She strokes her stomach as she thinks that she should probably meet Puck's mom this weekend as she said she would. She could probably put it off another week (and she feels like she may chicken out and do that), but maybe meeting her would help her get a better handle on what possibilities the future held. When she falls asleep that night, Quinn's still undecided about meeting Puck's mom- feeling like she's not ready to meet the woman who's granddaughter she's pregnant with, who may not want to be a part of this at all and therefore makes the end result a lot clearer (adoption seems like the only option if neither of their families are willing to at least consider trying to help at all- they'd never be able to support a baby as two teenagers…or one if Puck changes his mind). But she also knows that she can't just be working on getting money and medical care and putting together an academic plan, she can't keep ignoring all of the other things she's going to have to make decisions about.

-o-o-o-

The day before a break there always feels like there's a charge in the air among students. An eagerness to be done with the day and have their break started that's palpable. Though Friday had that, it wasn't the only thing that some students could feel in the air as there was a change that was making whispers ripple through the hallways.

Puck was honestly a little nervous to walk into school. It's been five year since he was without his Mohawk and though he thought he still looked damn good without it, he wondered how people would take it (how she would take it). He figures that if anyone takes the change as a sign that he's going soft or that he's not still a badass, he'll give them a shoulder-check, threaten them, or, as a last resort because he didn't want to risk expulsion, hit them. He figured he'd only need to do that once and word would spread that the hair didn't mean anything. (It did though, just not to majority of the school. For most of the school it would just be a haircut and he'd still be a bully who shouldn't be messed with. It was just for one person that this was a sign that he wasn't some jerk, he was trying to grow up, man up. And he had a feeling that thanks to a few other people knowing more about him- glee clubbers- some other people would get that message too. He couldn't help that now though.)

It feels like people start talking about him and staring at his head the second he gets out of his truck. But he's cool so he's not going to play into noticing that. Puck tries to continue his day as if it's just another day.

He does get a few comments on the change though (from the brave people/friends).

Tina and Artie come up to him on his way to first period and while Tina compliments the change simply saying it looks good, Artie agrees that he looks fine but thinks that he looked better before. They detour from him to their own classes debating the pros and cons of a Mohawk versus a shaved head.

Matt accuses him of copying him during their first period class. To which Mike wonders if he should copy as well.

After first period Brittany comes up to him at his locker and tells him, "I think you look way hotter. We should hook up."

"He doesn't do that anymore, remember," Santana says, still sounding like she thinks he's an idiot for not man-whoring around. Then she offers her opinion, "I agree and disagree with Britt. You look good, but before the whole bad-boy thing of the Mohawk added an extra hotness to your look."

"That's because you like guys who will piss off your dad," Puck says knowingly.

"True," Santana agrees before starting a conversation with Brittany despite staying with Puck at his locker. He's familiar enough with this sudden shutting out thing they do though that he doesn't take it personally, just heads off to class.

Rachel compliments him after second period. She says quickly as she passes him, "Very nice change Noah. Remember you're staying after glee club to discuss important business with me."

"Can't wait," he says dryly.

During third period geometry with Kurt, Kurt scanned over him and told him, "Your next change should be to invest in an iron."

He passes by Finn in the hall after third period and Finn notices the change, squints, and continues on ignoring him. He's pretty sure that Finn will get the significance even if he doesn't want to.

Then he passes by Quinn- sort of. He's at the other end of a hallway from her and she's heading in a class, but he sees her see him so now he knows for sure that if word hadn't already spread to her, she knew.

Quinn wasn't sure what to think of the change in Puck's appearance. She spent her whole fourth period thinking about it.

She knows that Puck said he'd keep the Mohawk until he died. But she also thought that he was probably exaggerating then and he'd likely get tired of it and change it eventually. The fact that he shaved it off now though makes her wonder if he did it because he'd been successful in his job hunt and whoever hired him ordered it, or because she'd teased him about it being horrible that night, or because most dads didn't have Mohawks. And she doesn't know what reason she really wants him to have behind the action (if it was for him, it'd be easier, but if it was for her or their daughter it would be…hard/nice).

She's not sure what she's going to say to him, but she's not surprised when she happens to run into him during the short brunch break after fourth period. She feels like an idiot for not being able to come up with anything better than the obvious, stating (as she can't take her eyes off his face, watching him intently), "You got rid of your Mohawk."

"Yep," he agrees. Trying to make this a normal, casual interaction he offers, "My mom nearly threw a party when I came home like this last night."

So did that mean he cut it because his mom thought it was stupid? Unclear and wanting answers, Quinn asks before she can stop herself (is it really her place to know when she thought space would be best for them?), "Why did you do it?"

Puck has a long answer about how he did it for her and how he did it for their daughter, for their possible future, the one he really wants. But Quinn still wants to do things alone so he offers her an answer that's honest and probably more to her liking at the moment. He shrugs casually and tells her, "It just didn't feel right for me anymore. Decided to change."

"Oh," she responds quietly. It seems like that vague answer is more towards the last two possibilities she came up with for why he did it (her heart flutters involuntarily at the thought). If he's being vague and not talking about it though, she's not going to try and get any more answers. It's probably best if they drop this (for now) anyway. She changes the subject, suddenly making up her mind about whether or not she really wanted to dive in to things she'd been avoiding, "I'm free all weekend, just like I thought I'd be, if your mom still wants to meet me I could easily be available."

"Good. I'll tell her and call you later with a time," he offers.

Talking had gotten awkward between them again and luckily the bell rings to give them an excuse to leave each other and not continue the torture of not knowing what to say (and the torture of trying not to say the wrong thing as they had both been prone to on several occasions now).

-o-o-o-

After school the glee club gathers in the choir room not because Mr. Schue wanted to squeeze in an extra practice before their break like they all thought, but because he wanted to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving, a fun and safe break, and give them a heads up on the assignment he planned on giving them when they got back (in case anyone wanted to get a head start). Though, over the last couple of days Mr. Schue hadn't seemed as cheery as he'd been the previous week after they had won sectionals so wishing them all a happy break wasn't inspiring when he seemed so downtrodden.

He moves on to the assignment with a half-hearted smile. He announces, "When you get back, your assignment will be to come up with a performance based on…Madonna."

The girls and Kurt are instantly pleased and all aflutter. The rest of the guys seem pretty disgruntled at the thought. Finn even suggests that the guys get the option of doing Pantera instead. Puck doesn't want to do Madonna either, but he has a few memories lingering in his head (and he could always use more points in his favor with all the females of the group- Quinn in particular) so he starts softly strumming the guitar he happened to have in his hands.

"Like a Prayer," Mr. Schue recognizes, "Nice Puck, way to be on board. See guys, it won't be so bad."

When Mr. Schue calls attention to him, Quinn, who had been sitting in the front a couple rows in front of him, looks back at him with everyone else. He locks eyes with her and hopes she knows that it wasn't a random song choice, but that his sister told her what she did for her and he still remembers it (remembers everything).

Mr. Schue tries to get them excited for the assignment for another minute before telling them to enjoy their breaks again and letting them go. Mr. Schue is out the door just as quick as most of the glee club. Puck hangs back because he knows Rachel will just show up at his apartment if he doesn't stick around like she wanted (he really never should have let her know where he lived).

Kurt and Mercedes are still sitting in their seats chatting, but apparently Rachel was getting impatient because she starts tapping her foot and then she just tells them that she'd like the room (she adds a please, but it still seems pretty demanding). They leave with a roll of their eyes.

And then, with the room empty except for him and Rachel, surprisingly Rachel says nothing. Puck keeps waiting for it (seconds dragging on like minutes) but she takes her time picking out a chair and then deciding the best place to put it next to him.

Puck's not patient so he warns (after only a minute of silence), "Either tell me what you wanted now or I'm leaving."

Rachel settles into a seat at his side facing him and she begins, "Well, Noah, we have a history that means that I know certain things that others possibly don't. Though that conversation you had Tuesday wasn't exactly quiet and you're fairly transparent so I suspect I'm not the only one who knows. But I figured I may be the only one willing to say something. Some of our peers can be quite cowardly, I've found." She hesitates, glances at the door, and continues on as if realizing that she can't stall any longer without it being horribly noticeable. She bites her lip for a second, but stops and continues, "I just wanted to see how you were doing. It seems pretty clear that you want Quinn and you didn't get her. So I just wanted to see how you were since she didn't pick you?"

Oh, so that's what this conversation was about. He should have known that if it was really about glee club Rachel wouldn't have waited to talk to him since she treated it like the most important thing ever. He tells her tightly, hoping she'll drop this, "I'm fine." Rachel looks at him doubtfully and with her big eyes she kind of reminds him of his sister, which, much to his agitation, has him offering a bit more. He tells her honestly, regretfully, "Look, it's not the first time she hasn't picked me- far from it. So I'm good. Been through this before."

Rachel is interrupted from trying to get him to say more when what she seemed to be waiting for comes through the door.

Finn walks in and notices them. He averts his gaze, saying to the floor, "Must have dropped my phone in here. I'll be gone so you can continue with…whatever in a second."

"You didn't drop your phone, I pick pocketed it from you," Rachel announces. She stands up and holds it out to him.

Finn comes up the first riser and reaches out for it, only for Rachel to withdraw it from him. He sighs and asks (because he knows that she's got to have a plan here), "What are you doing?"

"I will give you back your phone after you have a short conversation with Puck. Five minutes is all it will take for your property to be returned," Rachel proposes.

Finn looks at Puck, jaw tight, and refuses, "No."

"And why do you think I'd agree to that? It's not my phone," Puck continues, disgruntled that Finn shot down spending five minutes with him.

"I have something else for you," Rachel informs him. She grabs her bag from the floor and pulls out a jewel case as she informs him, "Quinn gave this to me. It's the DVD from your daughter's first sonogram. She said you can keep it if you do what I want."

"So she didn't want me to have it, it was just the best leverage she could come up with?" Puck asks because he was getting the impression that Quinn didn't really want him to have this and didn't he deserve it? The baby was his too.

"No," Rachel quickly squashes and then lies, "She wanted you to have it. She had it on her already when I approached her about what may persuade you to stick this out. She just finished unpacking all the stuff from Finn's that had stayed packed at the hotel so she just found it yesterday. I persuaded her to let me use it as leverage instead of just giving it to you." Technically none of that was true and lying to Puck may only result in him getting hurt (more), but Rachel couldn't help herself. She wanted Puck to stay and telling him the truth about how Quinn didn't seem to even be aware she had the DVD wouldn't get him to.

Puck sighs harshly, crosses his arms over his chest and tells her, "Fine. Five minutes."

Rachel turns back to Finn with a smile (proud that she had persuaded Puck) and tells him, "It's just five minutes- barely enough time to do any talking. Mr. Schue asked me to do something about the two of you. As captain of glee club-"

"I'm a captain too," Finn interjects thinking that it should mean he shouldn't have to do things for it that he doesn't want to.

"No you're not," Rachel informs him, "you couldn't manage to carry out the simple duties of being co-captain so I'm doing it on my own now." He looks a little hurt by this, but not as hurt as she does. Rachel continues on, "Anyway, as captain I need to make sure all group members can work together and the two of you haven't been able to. So you will talk for five minutes. I'll moderate. I got mono last year and watched a lot of Dr. Phil- I'm very well prepared to get to work on settling this between you."

Finn thinks about it for a minute, never letting his gaze go to Puck and trying not to look at Rachel either (things had been tense with a lot of people in his life lately). He doesn't want to do this. He doesn't care about anything Puck has to say (or so he thinks). But it would be very bad if he didn't get his phone back as in some classes he simply took a picture of the board rather than writing down his homework and if Rachel kept it she'd find out that his mom was first on his speed dial and she was second- which she'd probably get the wrong idea about and things were bad enough right now. He turns a chair around and takes a seat facing Puck. He tells Rachel, "I need my phone back so I guess I don't really have a choice."

Rachel smiles as she takes her seat again- neither boy thinking that he had any other choice but to participate was exactly what she was going for. She takes a stack of three by five cards out of her backpack and starts flipping through them trying to decide the best place to start.

Rachel keeps going through her cards, scanning them, frowning, and then moving on to a new card. Puck is already tired of just sitting here in tense silence so he warns, "If you keep dragging this out trying to think of how you're going to Dr. Phil us or whatever then I'm going to figure out a way to get that DVD from you without having to sit through this."

"Fine," Rachel says and puts her cards down (all the things she thought she should say and ask didn't seem right to her now). She clears her throat and considers everything for a second before her eyes light up with an idea. She asks, "Noah, before Finn came in you said that right now is not the first time Quinn hasn't chosen you. It's pretty clear that there was…something between you, but what exactly is your history with Quinn?"

"Longer than five minutes," he tells her. For one, he doesn't really want to tell everything to Rachel because knowing Rachel she'll just want to know more and have an opinion on everything, which he could do without. And more importantly he doesn't really want to tell Finn everything (the guy hates him enough as it is) and he's pretty sure Finn wouldn't want to hear it anyway.

"Fine," Rachel concedes for the moment, "When and how did whatever you had with her start?"

When he really thinks about it (which he's been doing a lot lately) Puck's not sure that what he assumed as the start of him starting to think of Quinn as more than a classmate was really the start of everything (he'd noticed her before that and hadn't really thought about her like he did other girls- just didn't know that meant anything). But when he thought it started was the path that would be easier for his listeners to understand. He offers, "The when was around the end of last April."

"I wasn't dating her then," Finn blurts out what he was thinking and quickly shuts his mouth (he had planned on participating in the conversation as little as possible). He didn't expect that though. He figured it was… well, honestly he tried not to think about it so he didn't really have any expectations.

"Nope," Puck agrees (feeling bad that he did know at the time that Finn was interested and knowing it would get worse as the story went on). "And the how," he continues, "was…well," he stalls not wanting to go into details on his mom. He directs to Finn, "You remember freshman year when my mom kinda went M.I.A. for a bit and I had to take care of everything- her, Kel, money?" Finn simply nods and Puck continues, "That wasn't a one time thing like I told you it was. She does that every year since my dad left. Drinks a lot and doesn't manage anything else for anywhere from a few weeks to a couple months. (Finn lets a moment of concern escape and cross his features before he realizes that he should still be angry, not supposed to care.) Last year those weeks of that for her started in April and we were out of money so I had to get a job. Only the first day I was supposed to show up for work I was running late and I was trying to get Kelyn out to my grandma's but she needed to go to the bathroom so I had to find a place. Foster's out on the North Dixie Highway was the place I stopped and Quinn just happened to be there. She'd make stuff up about tutoring and things to her parents and go there to escape being around them. She had this idea of mutually assured destruction that got me to tell her why I was there and she told me why she was there. I still don't know why she did it, taking pity on me or something, but she offered to watch Kelyn there so I could make it to work. Kelyn really liked her, she was really good with her, so that turned into a two week thing while I worked Monday through Thursday."

Since Finn hadn't gotten angry and left yet and actually seemed to be listening (and caring about what was being said- she thinks), Rachel decides that this was clearly a good path for this conversation. She eggs it on by asking, "So you spent a lot of time with Quinn and got to know her then?"

"Yeah," Puck confirms. He rubs at where his Mohawk used to be and continues uncomfortably, "Then, I know it wasn't a good thing to do, but after you asked her out I realized I could either always wonder if she was just another girl I was attracted to or if she was…something different or I could do something about it. So I kissed her and I was surprised when she kissed me back and I was surprised when it continued to a week long thing and I was really surprised to realize she was different for me. I knew it was a crappy thing to do because you thought she was going to go out with you, but I did it anyway and I kept waiting for her to say that she wasn't going to go out with you but she never did. I realized too late that I never told her that I didn't want her to be with you, that I wanted her to be with me. So we stopped our…thing together and she went out with you and you guys kept on dating."

Finn still wants to be angry. His girlfriend cheated on him with his best friend- said best friend betraying him in the process. He had the right to still be mad about that. It'd only been two weeks since he found out. But even if he thinks he should just want to hit the guy in front of him again, what he really wants to do is know more. He's starting to understand and even if he didn't want to do that yet it was happening and he couldn't stop it. He asks, "So if you stopped seeing each other by mine and Quinn's first date last school year, how did you get her pregnant a few months ago?"

"A friend of ours, the guy who owned Foster's, died and we ran into each other there when we both went to see his wife. We talked a little again for the first time in a long time and we fought too- but that's not really unusual. That was on a Friday and Quinn's weekend got worse from there thanks to her parents. She went to some party with them and she never told me what exactly was so bad about it, but whatever happened there it made her decide to call me and we met up," Puck re-caps. He looks Finn in the eyes and offers seriously, sincerely, "I shouldn't have gone to spend time alone with your girlfriend. I know that. It was a real crappy thing for me to do. I wasn't expecting anything else that happened that night. It wasn't just supposed to be one night though, she was going to tell you that Sunday but her parents messed everything up and then I helped it along and we…imploded. Even with the way things are turning out and after everything that's happened, I can't genuinely say I'm sorry it happened. I'm sorry I wasn't honest with you about everything and that you got screwed over in all of it, but I love her so I wouldn't take any of it back."

That seemed like a complete answer to both her original question and Finn's specific one, but then Finn didn't respond and Rachel's brow furrowed waiting for something else to happen. Giving up (after only thirty seconds of silence) Rachel tries to ask as un-pushy as she could, "Finn, do you have any thoughts on that or perhaps more questions?"

Finn looks a little shocked and he is pretty surprised by everything. He hadn't given how everything happened any thought, but just like when it started surprised him, how it came to be that they were having a baby together surprised him too. (It also surprised him how he wasn't really surprised about Puck's feelings. He'd known the guy a long time and he'd seen the changes even if he didn't want to.) "No," he says honestly, "I don't want to ask anything and I really don't want to hear anymore." He'd heard everything and he was sure that eventually it would make him feel a lot better, but it'd only been two weeks and he just wasn't ready to be forgiving or understanding, couldn't be yet. "It's been five minutes, can I have my phone back now?" he asks Rachel. At her disappointed look, he offers with a sigh, "I heard it all, it'll probably mean something- later. I did what you said you wanted though. So can I have my phone so I can go?"

Rachel had been (delusionally) hoping for a break through where both boys end up hugging it out and maybe even crying. Though she hated settling, she supposed the fact that there wasn't another fight made this a successful session. She concedes, "Fine. I suppose technically both of you kept your word and deserve the promised rewards." She gives Finn his phone back as she adds in, "As soon as I get more leverage on you we'll be having another session to continue attempting to resolve your issues."

Finn rolled his eyes while Puck scoffed. Though neither of them had a completely terrible experience with Rachel's first session, that didn't mean they wanted them to continue (especially if it meant Rachel trying to steal their stuff to have something to lure them there with).

As Rachel hands the DVD over to Puck, Finn begins to head out. Puck just stares at the case in his hand (_his daughter _is on the DVD inside). As Finn gets to the door, he pauses, turns halfway, and asks, "Your mom okay now?" (He can't help it, the concern. Puck was his best friend for a long time.)

"Yeah," Puck responds surprised that Finn asked, "she hit rock-bottom last time and she's been getting help ever since. She's really doing good. I don't think she's going to do that ever again."

Finn nods, clenches his jaw in an effort not to say anything in return (it was hard not to talk like they usually would when they were already talking) and leaves quickly.

"Well, I think that went very well," Rachel declares with an optimistic smile. She starts ranting from there- not noticing that Puck didn't respond. She also follows him out of the choir room and out of school and into his truck (apparently he was giving her a ride home- though, she didn't ask, just climbed on in). She continues talking the whole way to her house barely pausing for a breath as she mentions how she was right about his feelings for Quinn and she was right that Finn and Quinn would break up- could have been right sooner if he had told her the truth.

He's so intently tuning her out (he had to do something to try and prevent the headache she would surely induce) that he almost misses when Rachel tells him as they pull up to her house, "Quinn's joining me and my dads for Thanksgiving. If you happen to be around and without anything to do at any point during the day you should stop by. After all, holidays should be spent with loved ones and you love Quinn." She continues on so fast as she gets out of the truck that he doesn't have a chance to respond, "Have a good break and remember to practice for glee club. Thank you for the ride." With that she's shut the door and is briskly walking to her front door.

Puck sighs as he pulls away from the curb. Arguing with Rachel or asking her to keep her mouth shut about things he said in front of her was probably a lost cause anyway. Though he really hopes that Rachel doesn't mention any of it to Quinn- telling her he loves her wasn't on his agenda right now and it really shouldn't come from anyone but him anyway.

When Puck gets home he heads straight for the TV (DVD in hand), but his sister is there and he probably can't lie well enough to get her to believe the sonogram is something besides what it is. So he sits down on the couch and stares blankly ahead and waits. He's nervous and he doesn't know why. Finally, after an hour and a half, his mom comes home and starts prodding at Kelyn because she was supposed to be ready to go (apparently she had a sleepover to attend), which Puck is glad for because now he won't have to wait until she goes to bed to watch the DVD. (He could have used their computer, but it was in the same room as the TV- Kel would have noticed it.)

"Summer's mom is picking you up in five minutes and if you forget anything, I'm not brining it to you so make sure you have everything," May calls from the kitchen to her daughter who's in her bedroom.

She joins Puck in the living room, looking between menus in her hand as she poses, "What should we have? You feel like Mexican, Italian, or Chinese?"

"Don't care," he responds distractedly, grinding his back teeth and still keeping an eye on the DVD case in his hand.

Her teenage son, an eating machine, didn't have an opinion on food? That just wasn't right. "Everything okay?" she asks concerned.

He tears his eyes away to look up at her and he's about to tell her what's going on, but there's a knock on the door- Summer's mom is apparently early.

After everyone has cleared out, May comes back in and sits down on the couch next to her son. She notices the jewel case with what she thinks could either be a CD or a DVD in his hand and asks, "What's that?"

"The DVD of Quinn's first sonogram," he answers.

"She gave it to you?" May asks, thinking that it was a positive sign she could emphasize to him. She had liked the changes she saw in him (though she wished the circumstances that brought them about could have been different) and she didn't want him to get discouraged and change back. She wanted him to keep moving forward, but finding reasons for him to be optimistic and keep doing so was getting difficult.

"She let me have it…well, she let Rachel use it as leverage to get me to participate in this talk she wanted me to have with Finn," he explains.

"You talked to Finn?" May asked, hoping once again that this was a good sign.

"Yeah, sort of," Puck answers. He doesn't know if it really went as well as Rachel seemed to think, but he offers, "I think it went okay. I mean, he didn't hit me and since Rachel stole his cell phone and he had to stay to get it back, he did hear how everything happened and maybe that will make a difference eventually."

"I'm sure it will," May assures. "Well," she says taking the DVD from him, "let's watch this."

They watch it four times. Puck thought it would be really cool- he'd see his daughter for the first time and it'd be a moment he never forgot. But he's honestly not sure if he saw his daughter. He knows she's got to be in there somewhere on the screen, but where, he's got no clue. It takes May two viewings to decide what she thinks the baby is, but honestly these things never seemed clear to her so early on in a pregnancy either. She tries to take Puck's mind off of the fact that this didn't go as he thought it would by ordering them food from every place she suggested and having a feast.

It's not until they're done eating that Puck finally remembers that he was supposed to tell his mom about how Quinn was free to meet her this weekend. May harps on him for a bit because that was a pretty important thing to forget- Quinn could be in bed by then and she'd need to see her tomorrow as she had to go see her former mother in law Sunday and take her to bingo (her ex-husband had cut his mother out of his life just like he'd done to them- so as far as May was concerned they needed each other and they were still family).

Puck texts Quinn just in case she's already asleep, but she quickly texts back and they establish that Quinn will be there at twelve-thirty tomorrow. Puck has to be at Hank's at one, but for reasons his mom doesn't want to explain to him past "I think it would be best if you weren't there- it'd be less pressure for both of you," his mom didn't want him to be there.

(As he falls asleep that night, Puck tries not to think about how he keeps doing things, keeps trying to change the way things are, and how it doesn't really feel like anything is different.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn was glad that Puck texted her rather than called her. After his hair cut and the Madonna thing and knowing that he had the DVD now (Rachel had called to let her know that it was a fairly successful meeting) Quinn didn't really trust herself not to slip right back into thinking that she should give him another chance, which she wasn't willing to risk right now.

As she lays in bed, exhausted after a long day that ended with researching the safety on the most reasonably priced cars she found, Quinn doesn't notice how she has a hand lying on her stomach as she closes her eyes and hums "Like a Prayer."

The next morning, Quinn changes her outfit seven times. It's getting colder out, temperature in the low fifties, and majority of the things that currently fit- dresses- aren't really warm enough for right now. Plus, she's convinced she looks like her stomach has really popped (a term she read many women use on the pregnancy websites she frequented), but really, being tiny to begin with, at most she only looked bloated. Not to mention that even if Quinn wasn't very self conscious of her body at the moment, she still probably would have changed as many times as she did because she's so, so nervous (she's practically shaking). Eventually she settles on a poplin style square neck short sleeved dark grey sweater dress, tights, flats, and a coat to keep her warm. She puts her hair up in a bun and keeps her make-up simple (given the situation, she's very concerned about not looking slutty).

Eventually she makes it out the door and over to Puck's house. She's not surprised to see her hand shaking as she raises it to knock. She feels like she could have an anxiety attack at any second.

Puck promptly answers the door. He moves aside to let her in with a simple, "Hi."

"Hi," she returns, taking purposeful steps through the doorway (if she got inside and had the door between her and changing her mind she'd feel calmer- she hoped).

He grabs his coat from a hook by the door and tells her, "So uh, I'm going to get going in a few minutes- just wanted to warn you about that. My mom said she didn't want me here for this. I didn't really get a good answer out of her about that, maybe you will, but I have this job possibility thing anyway in a little bit. You still cool with doing this?"

"Absolutely. I'll be fine," she says trying to convince herself that's true and trying for a smile. She's too nervous to notice Puck's concern or think about how he might be getting a job (which, when she thinks about it later-as she will, she knows he's doing for their daughter).

"Okay," he says accepting it. He doesn't think that she's "fine" like she said, but he really doesn't want to argue with her. So he simply says, "Come on," and leads her to the kitchen where May is placing a plate of sandwiches on the table.

May looks up and sees her son standing at the edge of the kitchen with the girl pregnant with her granddaughter. She offers a smile (she really wants this to go well- for everyone's sake).

Puck takes a couple of steps into the room and gestures as he introduces, "Uh, Mom, Quinn, Quinn, Mom."

"May," she offers as steps around the table and offers her hand to the very nervous looking girl.

"It's nice to meet you," Quinn says politely as she shakes the other woman's hand, "I'm sorry I…couldn't do this sooner."

"Don't worry about it," May waves off, "this worked out perfectly anyway since Noah has somewhere he needs to be." She says the last bit pointedly.

Puck gets the not so subtle hint and says, "Yeah I guess I should get going." He grabs a sandwich and hustles out of the room (he knows they weren't made for him and didn't want his mom yelling about it) as he calls to them both (purposefully not clear), "Call me if you need anything."

Once he's out the door May tries to ignore/make the awkwardness go away by smiling. She had this a bit planned out and she gestures to the table as she offers, "Please take a seat and help yourself to some lunch. I thought this may be a little more comfortable if we have something other to do than talk and since I don't know what you like and Noah wasn't specific, we have a variety." She has a thought and asks worried, "You don't still have morning sickness, right? None of these will agitate it?"

"No, the morning sickness stopped a few weeks ago," Quinn answers as she does as the other woman suggested and takes a seat at the table.

"Was it bad?" May asks as she sits as well.

Quinn didn't know what qualified as bad so she simply describes, "I rarely made it through a class period without getting sick."

"Ah," May sighs, "I was the same way with both Noah and Kelyn- couldn't go an hour without getting sick for weeks."

Quinn smiles politely and takes a sandwich off the massive platter May made.

To avoid lulls that could become awkward, May was ready with a question, "Everything's alright, right? You and the baby are both healthy, no problems?"

"Yes," Quinn confirms, "I've seen a doctor twice and they've said everything is fine and I have another appointment in a little over a week."

"Good," May asserts. Not wanting to get too far into things without explaining herself, May offers, "Quinn, I had Noah leave because I wanted this to be about you. Noah told me everything- how the two of you ended up where you are. I'm sure that there's another side to at least parts of the story and I'd like to hear it from you, if you ever feel like it, but how you two ended up in this situation is the past and what I think is most important right now is the future. Also, I had Noah leave so that this meeting didn't become about you and him. I know things are…complicated and I don't want to butt in- though honestly there's a decent chance I will eventually- so I thought that by not having Noah here it'd be easier to make this about just you and forget about everything else."

Quinn appreciated that they wouldn't have to talk about her and Puck. But somehow saying that she was relieved he'd be left out of the rest of this meeting didn't sound like a good thing to say to someone about their son. So Quinn instead offers honestly, "I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to say about the future. I haven't…decided anything, haven't really begun to even."

"That's fine," May assures, "I just thought we could start talking about it. Nothing has to be decided today or even soon. You have time, both of you do." May smiles again and offers genuinely, "Besides just talking with you about the future, I wanted to let you know what the future looks like to me. You are having my granddaughter and whether or not you keep her, in my book, that makes you family for life. Noah mentioned your family hasn't been dealing with the situation well, but now you have us and you can count on us. I know you know about my…struggles, but I'm not having them anymore, I promise. Just in case that's a concern for whatever you're considering for the future, I wanted you to know, you can count on me to be well from now on. And you can also always count on our home as a place to be whenever you want. It's not big and it's not nice, but you're welcome to stay here any time you want. If you want to spend a night or move in, we'll figure something out- we can always move Noah from his room to the couch or Kelyn in with me, she's small. Or Noah mentioned how you don't like to be at home with your parents- which I don't know how you manage to be there at all- so you're welcome to come and just spend time here whenever you want. Our home is your home and we're family now no matter what, okay?"

That was much kinder than Quinn was expecting May to be. She knew that with kids like Kelyn and Puck she should have expected the woman to be nice, but she was having a baby with the woman's teenage son so she just assumed this wouldn't be completely dissimilar from her experience with her parents. She nods in understanding as she says gratefully, "Thank you. I really appreciate that."

May smiles and returns, "I should be thanking you. You got Noah to finally get rid of that horrible Mohawk."

"I didn't do anything," Quinn denies, because, literally, she hadn't done anything.

"But you were his reason for doing it," May counters and continues, "and I had begged him to get rid of it- nearly shaved it off in his sleep about a half a dozen times. Kelyn's made fun of him for it since she was five, but even for her he wouldn't do it." May wants to keep talking and really emphasize to the girl sitting across from her how huge this was for her son, but she said she would stay out of the status of their romantic relationship so she stops herself from continuing further. She changes the topic to avoid temptation to try to make her son's feelings clear to Quinn (Noah really wouldn't appreciate that and the girl didn't sound ready for it), "So, you're due in June, right? What are your plans for the rest of the school year?"

From there May asks Quinn quite a lot of questions about school and what she does know about the future so far. Quinn explains how she's going to stay in school rather than transferring to the independent study alternative school most girls in her condition go to. She mentions how college had been in her future and how she was trying to make sure it was still a possibility telling her about the University of Findlay and the credits she could get the following school year. Quinn tells May the specifics of her arrangement with her parents- about the car and how she's selling it and how her residency there will end by the time she has the baby.

"I really don't know what I'm going to do," Quinn confesses, "I know she'd probably be a lot better off if I give her up- two adult parents who are ready for her, stable, financially able to give her everything she needs and more. But a big part of me can't imagine having to give her away. And a smaller part can't imagine being a mother in high school. And then I feel guilty for that small part because this shouldn't be about me, it should be about her and…I don't know what to do. I'm just trying to get through it- take it one day, one week at a time."

"That sounds like a good way of dealing for now," May validates. "I'm sure that we'll all figure everything out and in the end everything will work out the way it's supposed to," May offers. She hesitates because she can see the cross around the girl's neck, but she presses on telling Quinn, "I believe everything happens for a reason and though the reason may not seem clear and dealing with things may not be easy, God doesn't allow things to happen in our lives that won't be for the best."

"I don't know how much I believe in that right now," Quinn offers honestly.

"I know," May says understandingly, "It was a hard idea to keep accepting when my husband left. Why would God let me marry a man who didn't actually want to be with me? Why would He let my home happen to be in my husband's name so he could take it away from me and my kids? Why would he make everything seem so hard sometimes? But here I am, surviving all the struggles and with two great kids. It may not have been what I dreamt of technically, but majority of the time I do feel like God blessed me despite everything I've been through. And personally, I believe you'll come to feel the same way because everything will turn out for the best. I have faith in that."

Her faith was one of the things Quinn had tried not to think about lately. She didn't want to lose it, but if she thought about everything she was going through she worried she'd end up blaming God or blaming herself (as she already did) and being bitter about God. Yet, here was May who had had pretty low points in her life too, but she still felt blessed. It was reassuring- and not just about the idea that she could still end up happy in life, but that maybe she shouldn't be avoiding her faith, maybe she should embrace it and it would make her feel better. "I hope you're right," Quinn offers, drawing herself away from the thoughts in her head.

Speaking of faith though, one thing Quinn had been gaining her faith in lately was people. The way her parents and most of the people at school treated her had reaffirmed a long time held belief that people were awful. But the kids in the glee club and their parents, and Carol still being nice, and May handling this so well were all things that were causing Quinn to start to develop a faith in the goodness of people (some people, at least). On that note, Quinn ventures, "Would you mind if I asked you something?"

"Of course, ask anything," May returns hoping this conversation hadn't felt one sided or come off like an interrogation because she absolutely didn't mean it to.

Quinn knows that it may not be "proper"- to steal a word that frequented her mother's vocabulary- but she needed to know this. She asks, "Given how my parents handled the news of my pregnancy and how they're still dealing with it, I just…I'm surprised anyone could handle it as well as you seem to be. This is definitely not an ideal situation, how are you managing to treat it…this well?"

"You're right," May offers, "this wasn't how I wanted Noah's life to go. It's not an easy road the two of you have ahead of you no matter what you decide. But it's not like he intended for it to happen- it was an accident, a mistake. And I can't really fault him or anyone else for their mistakes or be angry about those mistakes when I've made so many of my own. Besides, I think what both of you really need is someone who will support you through this and I want to do that for you, I think it's my place. I think it was your parents place to too and I'm sorry that they're not helping you through this."

"I always knew they were the type of parents that wouldn't be there no matter what," Quinn says, almost writing off their actions because it was always there in the back of her mind, the certainty that her relationship with her parents would end up like this.

"Maybe someday that will change," May offers optimistically because she hated to see that someone was going to lose having a relationship with her parents at such a young age. She hated that her own kids were missing a parent and she hated all the things she could see it do to them more.

Quinn simply tries for a smile in response because part of her hopes May is right and the other part of her knows that she isn't.

"Let's try for a happier topic," May begins, "I'd like to invite you to spend Hanukah with us. I know you're not Jewish, but more than religion, for us, it's about spending time together as a family, which you're now a part of so I'd really like you to consider joining us for all eight nights." Before Quinn can respond May adds, "You can come with us to my ex-mother in law's for Thanksgiving too. Noah mentioned that Rachel said that you'd be spending the day over there, but you're more than welcome to come with us. We can tell Kelyn what's going on by then and I already had Noah tell his grandma- though her memory's not what it used to be, she may need a reminder."

"I don't think Rachel would take it well if I canceled on her, but thank you for the offer," Quinn says sincerely. She's never celebrated Hanukah and she honestly doesn't know much about it. She's not sure if eight nights with Puck and his family sound like the best idea for her (it's only been a few days since she decided it would probably be best for her if she kept her space from Puck), but May has been so nice and understanding that she doesn't have the heart to turn the woman down. Just in case a really good reason not to do this occurs to her though, she tells her, "And thank you for inviting me to your Hanukah celebrations too. I'll probably be taking you up on your offer to have me over."

"Great," May says though she was hoping for Quinn to accept the invitation now, but she felt optimistic about the chances of Quinn joining them anyway. She decides that they could probably both benefit from sticking to lighter topics a little bit longer and starts asking Quinn about what's going on with glee club (Noah rarely tells her anything about it and when he does it's like pulling teeth).

They continue talking for a while longer, covering more difficult topics and more easy ones. Quinn finds it surprisingly easy to talk to May. When she'd lived with the Hudson's Carol, who at the time thought Quinn was having her granddaughter, had been very nice. But there was something that made Quinn feel uncomfortable around her. Like she always had to be careful about what she said. But with May she felt honest enough to express how she was feeling about everything (concerning the baby and her family situation and school at least- not Puck). She thinks maybe it's because May just seems more accepting. (Actually it's how May reminds her of Puck that has her feeling more at ease).

-o-o-o-

Things with Hank had gone well for Puck. He finished the chair he was building after only being there for a little over an hour and when Hank inspected it he said, "Well, when our jobs require woodwork it tends to be of the sort where we have to make something to match existing woodwork somewhere- a cabinet, a banister, molding. I don't remember ever having to build a chair. But this does show that I could leave you to do work like that on your own- you show a lot of skill." Puck had been ready to mentally high five himself for a job well done when Hank added on, "I need you to be able to do more than just one thing though so I'll call you when I get back, have you come and meet all the guys who work for me, and we'll get you set up to start trying to learn other skills and see how you do with them."

Hank also gives Puck five books- all the ones he'd need to for the exams to get licensed eventually if he had the ability and desire to stick with this. Hank strongly hints that they'd help him learn what Hank is going to expect him to be able to pick up so he may want to take a look at them (Puck starts reading them that night- he really needs this to work, it could really help if he had a career rather than just a job).

When Puck gets home (slightly earlier than he said he'd be back) he just hopes he doesn't find anything bad. He was nervous about leaving Quinn and his mom together mostly because he didn't know what to expect. He didn't know why his mom wanted to talk to Quinn alone or what- besides her desire to do things alone- Quinn had been feeling lately.

He's surprised to find Quinn still there when he returns. He's even more surprised that when he walks into the kitchen both women smile at him as his mom asks him how his job thing went.

He tells them how it went well and things are looking good for him to get on with Hank's company. Quinn declares that she should probably head home and, on a whim, Puck says he'll walk her out (he uses the books Hank gave him which he forgot in his truck as an excuse to do so).

May hugs Quinn as she says goodbye and promises to call her.

Quinn hugs May back almost tearing up as she realized it had been a while since anyone hugged her and she really, really needed it.

They don't talk as they head downstairs, not until they get outside and Quinn tells Puck sincerely, "Your mom is amazing. You're really lucky to have her."

"I know," Puck says honestly. Despite her annual depressions, he'd never thought of his mom as anything short of fantastic.

They get to the sidewalk and he hesitates (because she may not want him to say this), but offers, "If you need anything this week …or ever, just call."

"Thanks," she says simply. She does appreciate the gesture, but her calling him would just start them on a path that she's been sure they shouldn't go down (though, she has been feeling herself wavering on that even though she knows she shouldn't).

She gets in her car with a little wave goodbye and he grabs his books from his truck. (She tells herself she didn't notice how he'd stood on the sidewalk, retrieved books that were his excuse for walking her out in his hand, and watched her drive away until she was out of sight.)

(Here's something you should know: He wanted to get in his truck and drive after her. He wanted to grab her and kiss her as they stood on the sidewalk. But more than anything, he didn't want to mess things up with her again. So he's trying to be careful and smart and not always act on impulse. And he hangs on to the small hope that someday his cautiousness will pay off and he'll get what he wants.

What he doesn't know, is that he's not going to have to wait much longer before he starts to see some results.)

* * *

**A/N: I hope you enjoyed the chapter!**

**Next chapter title:** _I'm hung up on you, waiting for your call baby night and day_ from "Hung Up" by Madonna. I think you'll find it's appropriate in a couple of different ways.

**Thank you for reading! And remember that reviews equal love so please leave one!**


	14. Chapter 12

**A/N: Thank you to the wonderful people who reviewed!**

**Speaking of reviews, they've fallen again. **Way less than one percent of readers reviewed the last chapter and that's just very depressing. I'm going to write the rest of this story no matter what because I enjoy it. However I would appreciate knowing if I'll be writing it for me and the .03% of people who are kind enough to tell me they're still interested in it or if the rest of you reading and not reviewing would like to see how everything plays out too and that you're not just on this page right now because you were bored and didn't have anything else to do.

Also, I was serious about the **twitter **experiment- details still on my profile. I would like to inundate people with tweets of this story. However I've been the only person doing that (as far as I know), which is a bit pathetic, I know, but I'm still looking for participants. If you don't have a twitter account but would like to participate, well, it only takes less than five minutes to set one up. Also, you do not have to tweet this story. Actually, I found tweeting Brad Falchuk about all the things annoying me lately with the show and tips very cathartic and if you have likewise been irritated I highly recommend it.

**Note on timeline:** I know where Quinn is at in her pregnancy has been left unmentioned for several chapters now and it will be for a few more. I also know that doing that has been confusing, but, as I've mentioned, in cannon the timeline of the pregnancy didn't work and then when I incorporated it in this story it threw her pregnancy way the hell off- which was a problem I did not foresee (I blame my poor math skills). Thanks to the cannon, Quinn's pregnancy was propelled to the start of her second trimester around the end of October, when, since I had her get pregnant in early September, that would have actually been something that happened around mid/late December (reaching second trimester). So I haven't been mentioning her specific week and I won't until a special event that I think will be worth all of this confusion and then I'll be vague again for about a chapter so we can finally have her in the right week at the right time. I know, it's messy, and I'm sorry about that. It will be sorted and clear eventually though, I promise.

**Note on next update:** So I thought the next chapter would contain all of Hanukah, but all the things (of which you'll learn about late in this chapter) that precede Hanukah took about thirty pages so I'm just going to make that stuff it's own chapter and Hanukah the chapter after it. I hope both chapters will be less daunting that way and the next chapter is nearly finished (three-ish pages away).

Also, as usual all places and details are real or based on real things (actually some of the cars, though real, were not located in the city they are below- though at the time the research for this chapter was done they were in the Ohio area). I didn't get into the details of the title change and why they needed to go to court for that though, but if you for some reason would find that information valuable I did spend so much time on Ohio's BMV website that I can explain it if anyone would like.

I think that's everything. Sorry for the long note, especially since it's preceding a rather long chapter. I hope you enjoy it despite this ramble and the length ahead:)

* * *

**Cheated Hearts

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**

_XII. I'm hung up on you, waiting for your call baby night and day_

(Here's something you should know: They can't go back to the beginning and start all over again. Too much has happened to go back to that place.

However, they could, possibly, find their way from here.)

Saturday evening Quinn gets a call from Burt. He found someone interested in seeing her car- a friend of a friend. He'd never met the guy so he declares he's coming with Quinn to show the guy the car just to make sure it's safe for her and to make sure he doesn't try to swindle her. Quinn doesn't argue and they arrange to meet the man in the parking lot of the high school in the afternoon.

Quinn prepares for the meeting by putting on a very tight outfit to emphasize her baby bump. Only now that she wants it to be very obvious that she's pregnant and not just a little fat, she suddenly doesn't feel as large anymore. She ends up stuffing her shirt to look like she's a bit more pregnant than she actually is.

This confuses Burt when she shows up and he asks awkwardly, "Weren't you like…less big a few days ago?"

She explains, "Yes. I added some…padding. Just in case the guy tries to low ball me for the car, I wanted to be able to emphasize the baby and cry about how my family has abandoned me and this money is going to be all the money I have in the world to survive on. I'm hoping that if he pities me enough he'll be willing to pay blue book for the car."

"Maybe you didn't need me to come," he says, thinking that that would probably be more effective than the haggling he'd been planning to do.

The man they meet is in his late fifties/early sixties. He seems wealthy- arrived in a Mercedes- and he mentions that he wanted to buy his new wife (number five from what they gather- and she sounds at least thirty years his junior) a car exactly like Quinn's. Burt jumps in describing all the features and pointing them out. Quinn's dad had had it customized some in the interior and Burt uses that to emphasize it's uniqueness. The man ends up being sold on it though by thinking about how good his new wife would look driving it around with the top down.

Quinn tells the man that the price is $35,000 expecting that she'd get haggled down some (hopefully not lower than the blue book price though). He offers $33,000, which is close to her goal, but he declares he won't go a penny higher so don't even bother trying, just take it or leave it. Quinn decides to give her plan of crying and telling the man her horrible situation through the tears a shot. He offers $34,000 to get her to stop crying and she takes it. They arrange to meet the following day to exchange keys and title for a check. (Quinn doesn't mention how the title won't even be changed to be in her name until her and her mother go to the courthouse tomorrow.)

It was an excellent day though. Quinn was going to get more for her car than she planned and that money would really help her out in the months to come.

Her phone rings that night as she's finishing her dinner and she answers without looking at who's calling. She'd already talked to her sister twice, but Jess had said she'd call again so she just assumed it was her. Instead of her sister though she hears Puck greet, "Hey."

"Hi," she returns, a little confused about why he would call. He'd been respecting how she wanted space and that had included _not _calling.

"Uh, Kurt said something about you trying to sell your car today and I just…wanted to see how that went?" he stumbles slightly. (He knew that respecting that she was doing things alone had included him not calling her unless he had a really, really good reason. But he was tired of not calling her and if he did call and just talk to her didn't it help prove that he was capable of being the responsible, mature guy he wanted to show her he could be and not the jerk he'd been sometimes? He thought so, so he'd decided he'd call her every day of break and pray that it didn't make things worse between them.)

It wasn't what she would expect him to call about, but she supposed it made sense. It was kind of a big deal so she understood why he would be curious (she had told his mom about wanting to sell the car too so May was probably curious as well and had encouraged him to just ask about it). She answers, "It went very well actually. The guy agreed to pay a little bit more than I was hoping he would. So tomorrow I'll go to court with my mom, get the title in my name, and then sell it to him."

"That's great," he comments. There's a pause and before it can drag on to get really awkward, he offers, "That means you'll be without a car again though, right? If you ever need a ride or anything I'm around. My mom too."

"Thank you," Quinn says sincerely, "I may need to take you both up on that if I have to go too long without a car. I don't think it'll be long though, I've been seeing some pretty good deals it's just a matter of figuring out what would be best."

"What are you looking for? Something reliable, safe, good gas mileage, not too old, not too many miles, and fairly cheap so you don't spend too much of what you're getting for your car?" he guesses.

"Those were my conditions for a car exactly actually," Quinn says surprised that he managed to guess what she'd want so accurately.

"Something like that doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to find," Puck figures.

Considering the number of cars she'd bookmarked on , Quinn offers, "Yeah there does seem to be a lot that fits that, I'm just narrowing down what seems to be best and I'll make a decision and then try to make sure that the cars I look at are all that they're supposed to be."

Puck thinks on it for a second. He could offer to look at cars with her, but honestly he doesn't know that much and she may not appreciate him using his barely-there knowledge as an excuse to spend time with her. So instead he suggests, "You know besides Kurt's dad obviously knowing about cars as you already know, I'm pretty sure Mr. Schue knows at least a bit about cars so he may be able to help you avoid buying a lemon."

"Thanks," Quinn says sincerely because that was something she hadn't thought of and may come in handy.

Puck wishes her luck with the car hunt and says goodnight then- not wanting to keep the conversation going as it'd been going pretty well and he figured odds were against him that that would continue the longer he let it go on.

Quinn hangs up feeling…odd. It was a perfectly normal conversation. Only lately they didn't have perfectly normal conversations. She didn't know what to think of it so she tried not to think of it at all.

-o-o-o-

The next day she spends a tense thirty minutes with her mom getting the title of the car changed to her name. She runs into Mr. Abrams on her way out and he reminds her that she's welcome in their home and to join them at church any time (she's considering taking him up on that church offer- after her talk with May she kind of feels like going back to a church).

In the early evening she gets the check for her car and hands the keys and title over. Burt didn't want her alone with the man still so since he's there he gives her a ride to his house (he insisted she join him and Kurt for dinner to celebrate the sale) and then Kurt drives her home later.

She and Kurt made plans to go out on Tuesday as Kurt claimed he needed to go shopping to have something new and fabulous to show his grandma who's house they were leaving for on Wednesday. He also insisted that Quinn needed better clothes for now and as her pregnancy progressed- especially things more appropriate for the cold climate settling in for the winter. Quinn agrees to the day of shopping as long as Kurt stops at the bank so she can put the check in her currently empty account.

Kurt invites Mercedes along on their shopping trip and honestly the idea of Mercedes joining them makes Quinn nervous. She can't remember ever having an actual conversation with Mercedes and she knows that she hasn't given her a reason to like her. Sure she'd complimented a few of her performances, but everyone else was always doing the same when she did so it wasn't a big deal. While she's become friends with Kurt and Artie, Quinn has yet to make a female friend and she'd like to be friends with Mercedes. (She'd like more friends in general now that she doesn't have a status that requires her to be friendless.) But she's nervous about making a good enough impression for the person that she was to be forgotten so maybe she has a chance at making a friend as the person she is. Despite her nerves about making a good impression on the shopping trip, Quinn is very much looking forward to Tuesday (not even her dad's disgruntled expression about noticing how she came home car-less can change that).

(That night, she gets another call from Puck. It's after she's turned off her phone and fallen asleep- early, she'd been exhausted and Kurt wanted to start the next day early. She's surprised that he left a message.

He said: "Hey, I guess I called too late, but I just wanted to see if you got your car sold like you planned. I guess I'll talk to you later though." There's a very short pause before he offers, "I hope things went like you wanted them to. Uh, so yeah, goodnight…or I guess probably good morning."

He didn't say to call him back so she doesn't. And she won't admit it to herself, but the message does make her feel like the morning is indeed good.)

Tuesday morning Kurt picks Quinn up exactly on time (ten a.m.). Rather than texting her that he was there to pick her up or honking, Kurt knocked on her front door- which her mom answered- and invited himself in and up to her room to knock on her door. She's impressed by his boldness and his complete lack of care for what her parents thought or would think and how he'd just marched in confidently (she wished she could pull off that kind of strength more often).

They head to the bank for Quinn to deposit the check for her car, which unfortunately may take a few days to process they warn her. When she comes back to the car after she's done at the bank Kurt has lost his eagerness for the day ahead. Apparently Mercedes had called him while he was waiting for Quinn and Mercedes didn't think she'd be able to join them. Her family stuck her with babysitting her visiting nephew and niece at the last minute despite the fact that she told them she had plans (her family didn't consider her trip to the mall as _real _plans). Mercedes doesn't want to get stuck watching them all day though- at least not at home- so she promises that she's going to try and find a way to join up with them at the mall, she just has to talk her brother and sister-in-law into letting her take them there.

As they arrive at the mall one person short, Quinn thinks that it's probably not the best time to tell Kurt how she doesn't have any money to spend at the moment so technically he'll be the only one shopping. She manages to put off that conversation until they're inside, but Kurt still insists on pointing out all the things she should come back and buy once she does have money. It doesn't take much time shopping before Kurt's mood is lifted again.

About an hour and a half into their trip, Mercedes finds them with two kids in tow. They try to browse a couple of stores, but the kids really don't want to be there, they're completely bored. Getting to know Mercedes/trying to become friends with her seems like a lost cause when she has two kids hanging over her whining. Quinn had come on this trip to be a friend to Kurt and to try and start becoming friends with Mercedes, but given the circumstances it didn't seem like she was going to be successful at that. So, since she's not shopping anyway, Quinn offers to take the kids off of their hands and take them to the arcade.

"Are you sure?" Mercedes checks after Quinn makes her offer, "Cause they take after my brother- they're really annoying. They'll drive you crazy."

"I'm sure. It'll be fine," Quinn tells them. The boy was eight and the girl was six and Quinn figured she had handled far worse kids than they could possibly be.

She's right about the kids. They're not as difficult as others she had watched. They were just bored watching three teenagers shop and once they were free to play arcade games while Quinn watched (and played a few with each of them), they were much more pleasant.

After about an hour of letting them play, Quinn figures she should use some of the money Mercedes was given to take them there to buy them lunch. It's five minutes after she's gotten the kids some food that Mercedes and Kurt find them.

Her brow furrowed, Mercedes questions, "You got them to eat the healthiest thing in the mall? How'd you manage that? It took me twenty minutes to get them to get in the car."

Quinn had had limited options for food for the kids (their mall kind of sucked), but she'd simply taken them to Subway and not offered them any other choice but to get something there. She didn't see the big deal. But she offers, "I have a lot of experience babysitting."

"Well damn, if you're that good with kids my church has a babysitting list thing, kind of like a phone tree, I should get you on it," Mercedes offers.

"Most people, understandably, don't like me around their kids anymore," Quinn informs her. But it was a nice offer and she did need to earn as much money as she possibly could for the future so she adds on, "Though I could really use any kind of job so if you could see if anyone at your church would happen to be okay with me despite my condition, I'd really appreciate that."

"Sure, no problem," Mercedes responds. Her phone buzzes and she sighs heavily as she checks her phone and texts something. She declares, "I should really get them out of here. That's the third time my brother asked why we weren't back yet- they didn't want me to take the kids for too long." Mercedes has the kids take their lunches with them (she eats in her dad's car that she borrowed so they certainly could) and heads off while her phone buzzes yet again.

Kurt declares that he feels like lunch himself- but not from anywhere in the mall, he doesn't want to be bloated when he sees his grandma. So they settle on the nearest restaurant- Ruby Tuesday.

As they're eating, Quinn's phone rings and she pauses as she notices who's calling. But she can feel Kurt watching her and she doesn't want to give him a reason to think that this name/person had any effect on her. So she answers, doesn't hear anything, then she hears what sounds like a car starting.

Quinn's brow furrowing deeply prompts Kurt to ask, "Who is it? What's going on?"

She simply shrugs in response as she hears…shuffling?

Kurt, impatient and very curious, grabs the phone and puts it on speakerphone to listen.

She doesn't fight him over it and offers, "I think Puck may have accidentally dialed me. I should just hang up."

Since there only seems to be silence (and maybe what sounds like an old, loud car engine), Kurt's ready to give in and just hang it up until they here, "No. You're not seriously trying to get away with putting a Justin Bieber CD in my stereo. What have I told you about that? This is my truck, my tunes- and that means definitely not Bieber."

"That's not fair," Kelyn whines (they can hear the pout in her voice).

"My car, my rules," Puck emphasizes.

"But you let me play Madonna yesterday," Kelyn points out.

"That was only because that happens to be the assignment for glee club right now," Puck writes off.

Kurt is pretty sure that the female voice doesn't belong a girlfriend or anyone like that, but he checks, whispering, "Sister?"

Quinn simply nods (trying not to think about how apparently playing Madonna rubbed off on Kelyn…and Puck).

They can hear what sounds like a radio scanning stations and when it pauses a little bit longer on one station (Metallica playing), Kelyn whines, "No, not that. If you leave it on this station I'm going to punch you in the arm until you change it."

"Oh yeah, it definitely his sister. It sounds like she's grown up with his influence," Kurt comments.

"You could have just asked me to pick something else nicely," Puck tells her as he starts scanning the stations again.

"I think my way's quicker," Kelyn reasons.

Puck settles on a classic rock station, a familiar song playing, and Kelyn doesn't protest.

Then some of the more familiar lyrics start and they hear Kelyn half sing/say, "Clowns to the left of me."

"Jokers to the right," they hear Puck sing along in response and then the two of them together finish it off, "Here I am, stuck in the middle with you."

They do it a couple more times and then the song ends and switches to something new (it occurring to both Quinn and Kurt the placements of passenger and driver in the truck and how that fit for what they sang).

It's when the song ends that Quinn realizes that she's let this go on too long (in front of Kurt no less). So she reaches out and hangs it up. She looks up and expects Kurt to ask questions that she doesn't want to know the answers to herself right now.

Kurt really wants to pry. But damn his kindness, it just won't let him when it seems like the last thing desired here. He just made a new friend, he's not going to ruin that. So Kurt offers, "Well now I feel like a slacker. Even Puck has started working on the Madonna assignment and I love Madonna and I haven't bothered to even begin to think about what I'm going to do."

Quinn, grateful for the fact that Kurt wasn't talking about the topic that she didn't want to, keeps them on this path by asking, "What's your favorite Madonna song?"

"Don't Tell Me" is my favorite song, but "Vogue" is my favorite video. I'll probably end up doing something with one of them, but then I do love everything she's done so the possibilities are endless," Kurt answers. He then asks Quinn about what she's considering doing, if anything, and the conversation never manages to circle back to the phone call or how Quinn was smiling during it or how she looked panicked when she hung up.

Later that day, after shopping with Kurt has ended and Quinn is in her room frequently checking her bank account online to see if the check cleared yet, she gets a phone call.

Once again her phone says Puck is calling and she half expects it to be an accident (half worries that he noticed how long she stayed on the line when he accidentally called her before). She's surprised when he skips right to the point saying, "Hey, I think I accidentally butt-dialed you earlier. Sorry about that."

"Don't worry about it," Quinn brushes it off.

"So…" Puck drawls considering if he should actually ask, but he's curious so he continues on, "what'd you hear?"

She knows that if she says she heard nothing it'd probably sound like a lie (and what if he happened to know what he was doing at the exact time his phone says it called her?). So Quinn offers a bit of the truth and hopes Puck doesn't think on it too much, "I heard you telling Kelyn that she's not allowed to play Justin Bieber in your car."

"Right," Puck says vaguely recalling it (it was a daily conversation with Kel lately- they tended to get blurred). Actually, thinking about it, he asks, "Do you know how to get her to stop liking that tool cause I'm tired of arguing with her everyday about it?"

"I don't think there's anything you can do. She's a ten year old girl and, to her, he's cute," Quinn offers (smiling).

Puck groans in frustration, "But…if I have to keep hearing it across the hall from her room, I'm seriously going to go insane."

Quinn laughs a little and offers, "At least she'll probably out grow it eventually."

"Better be soon," Puck mutters.

Thinking of Kelyn though, Quinn realizes that they had something that they needed to talk about (and probably should have already). She doesn't really want to talk about it, but she knows they need to (and if they wait too long it could be more difficult). So she broaches, "Speaking of Kelyn though, I guess we should probably tell her soon."

"Yeah," Puck agrees. Trying to not let on how much he's dreading that (because he doesn't want Quinn thinking he's dreading anything to do with her or the baby), Puck points out, "Well, at least even if it sucks telling her she'll be really happy to see you."

"Really?" she asks surprised.

"Of course. She's only asked me if she could see you again at least once a week since last spring," Puck tells her without a second thought. He adds on seriously, sincerely, "She's missed you."

"I missed her too," Quinn says honestly (and feeling like she/they're talking about more than just Kelyn).

This was getting kind of serious and Puck had noticed that things tended to go bad between them when that happened. So he jokes, "Maybe after we tell her you should just take her off our hands for a while. She can stay there with you and your parents. I'm sure they'd love her and her food-dye filled water balloons."

Quinn laughs and responds, "I really wouldn't mind seeing that. We may have to make it happen."

(We? Well, Puck took that as a good sign.)

Quinn's laptop was open next to her and she'd been signed on to Skype expecting a call from her sister (because Jess called at least three times a day) and before she can say anything more or Puck can respond, she notices her sister calling and the green accept call button pop up with the red reject call button. If she doesn't answer (and rejects the call for later) Jessica is going to worry and won't stop calling until she gets a response- she knows that. So Quinn hits the accept button, camera on her laptop already pointed at her, gestures to her phone and gives her sister a "1 minute" gesture. She tells Puck, "My sister's calling so I should-"

"Yeah," he cuts her off, understanding. Not wanting the call to end on that he offers, "I'll get Kel to work on new pranks so she has something good ready for your parents."

"I should have a problem with that, but I don't so have fun with that," she responds. "Bye," she concludes.

"Bye," he returns (feeling pretty good about this conversation).

"Who was that?" Jessica demands eagerly as soon as she sees Quinn hit the end button on her phone.

Quinn can't lie to her sister and furthermore she really doesn't want to (even if she doesn't want to have some Puck-centric conversation). So she tells her truthfully, "Puck." And adds on to write off it's significance, "He'd called me by accident earlier."

"Uh huh," Jessica responds doubtful that that was the only reason he called or the only topic of conversation. "Now, don't hate me for bringing this up," she begins, "but as your sister who cares about you and wants to see you happy, I feel it's my duty to point out that you were smiling since you answered my call and that you're still smiling and that seems to be because of him. _And_- I've never seen you smile like that."

Quinn immediately stops smiling (or attempts to). She tries to explain away the smile though by saying, "He was just telling me about his sister- who apparently has been combining water balloons and food dye and throwing them at people. And he mentioned how after she knows about me maybe I should bring her over here and have her throw one of her concoctions at our parents. Doesn't the idea of that make you smile too?"

"Well, yeah," Jessica admits (and smiles as she imagines her parents getting hit with anything). She sighs because she obviously took the wrong path here since Quinn seemed to be fighting her on it, but she felt a sisterly responsibility to make sure her sister didn't make the wrong decisions. She tries again, "But just because he said something that made you smile doesn't mean that the part where _he's_ involved in you smiling is insignificant." She offers understandingly, "It sounds like you don't want to talk about this, but I don't want you to miss out on anything here. I know he hurt you. He's been an idiot. But a lot of guys are- especially at his age. Just, if he can get you to smile like that, maybe you should consider not writing him off completely for good."

"I'm not writing him off," Quinn responds, stealing her sister's phrase, "I'm not doing anything. The state of my romantic life just isn't at all important right now. I have too many other things to deal with to add that to the list." (That's half true. The other half of it is that it just the last heartbreak still hurt and she didn't think she could take another one now or if she really wanted to risk another one on Puck again.)

"I know," Jessica agrees and she wants to point out that if she happened to have found the right guy though, they don't always wait around- she may not have a chance with him later. But she can see the hurt and the denial written all over her sister's face so she uses the opportunity to transition into asking her sister about shopping with her new friend instead.

By the end of the day, the check hadn't cleared (and that should have been Quinn's biggest worry, instead of what her sister said about Puck).

-o-o-o-

Wednesday Quinn wakes up early even though she has no particular reason to. She finally has her appointment at her local WIC office this afternoon, but she has no idea what she's going to do about getting there. She was hoping that by mid-morning the check would have cleared and she could get some cash and afford to take a cab.

She considers calling May because May would probably appreciate her going to her for help even if it was just a ride back and forth. But May was probably working. She also considered calling Puck, but quickly decided against that because she just wasn't ready for that. She also considers calling Ms. Pillsbury because she had given her, her home number just in case she ever needed her and Ms. Pillsbury had made the appointment for her and offered to come along if she wanted. But she was probably already gone for the holiday so Quinn ultimately decides against trying her as well. Kurt was already gone and she and Mercedes didn't exactly become friends the previous day- not to mention that Mercedes didn't have a car. Santana had a car but didn't do people favors unless there was something in it for her.

So Quinn decides that she'll just leave early and walk the fairly long distance to the WIC office. She has enough money on her to get a cab both ways, but it's all the money she has left if the check doesn't clear so she doesn't want to sacrifice all of it. She figures that if she has anything to carry (like the groceries they supply women in her condition- which she's not sure if she'd get yet) she'll splurge on a cab back but walk back if she doesn't.

Though she gets to the WIC office early, Quinn still has a wait past the time of her scheduled appointment before her meeting actually begins. Things get squared away fairly easily from there. Given her condition, her age, and being kicked out of her home she easily qualifies for the program. They go over a lot of things, explain a lot of things, and she gets to leave with free food (eggs, cheese, cereal, milk). By the time she's done and in a cab back home it's evening and she still has quite a few things to take care of.

She gets home and she goes directly to her computer so she can check her bank account. The bank is closed for the day already so she knows that if it didn't clear (given that tomorrow's a holiday) she won't have money until Friday at the earliest. Luckily, it cleared. It's all there in her bank account- $34,000. And in about another week she'll be able to add her earnings from subbing for Coach Sylvester to it.

The money being there adds to the list of things Quinn needs to get done tonight though. She starts off with what should be the easiest task- calling Rachel.

Rachel must have noticed that it was Quinn calling because rather than greeting her with a "hello" she answers, "You better not be calling to back out because I won't hear it if you do."

"I'm not backing out," Quinn quickly interjects.

"Oh, okay," Rachel sighs in relief.

"I was wondering if one of your dads or you could pick me up though. I sold my car a few days ago and since the cash from it just cleared in the bank I haven't gotten another car yet. And I don't think I'll be able to find a cab working in Lima on a holiday," Quinn explains.

"Sure, of course we'll pick you up. I'll be there at nine," Rachel responds.

"Nine?" Quinn asks confused- isn't that early to start Thanksgiving?

"Yes. Our Thanksgiving celebration starts with watching the parade. Didn't I mention that before?" Rachel answers and before Quinn can say that no, she hadn't been told that, Rachel rambles on, "I know I told someone that. Though everyone's always asking what you're doing for a holiday when one is approaching and I have been running into people lately. I ran into Mrs. Hudson over the weekend and Ms. Pillsbury and Mr. Rand and his family yesterday- though I don't know why he wasn't at work with my dad, I know he was supposed to be. I should call my dad's boss and turn Mr. Rand in for skipping work."

"Rachel," Quinn says firmly, hoping to stop this rant. When it quiets down she continues politely, "Thank you…for everything. I need to get going, but I'll see you tomorrow."

"Of course. See you tomorrow," Rachel responds in kind.

Though Quinn was getting used to asking for help and even asking Rachel (a former nemesis) for help had gone well enough, but she was still dreading her next call. She triple checks the cars she wants (thus hesitating) and finally gives in and calls Mr. Schuester.

"Hello," comes his warm greeting (clearly not aware of who was calling or he'd been concerned).

"Hi, Mr. Schue, this is Quinn," she stumbles awkwardly.

"Quinn? Is everything okay?" he asks- that predictable concern coming in now that he knows she's calling him.

"Yes," she responds quickly (though she's not sure she's really that fine at the moment- she's so nervous she's actually blanking about what to say). She finally scrambles, "I just…I was hoping I could ask you a favor."

"Of course," he responds immediately.

She still feels jittery despite the fact that he's perfectly willing to hear this and he hasn't treated her or even looked at her different since the truth of everything she did (including how she was in cahoots with his wife) came out. She manages to launch into her planned speech despite her nerves, "Since I'm going to be supporting myself for good now, I needed money so- long story short- I decided to sell my car. I did sell it this past weekend. I still need a car though so I wanted to spend a portion of the money I got for my car to buy a new one. I've been looking at some online and researching them and there's a few I'd like to look at in person and strongly consider buying. I don't want to get stuck paying for a car that isn't what it's promised to be and I heard that you know about cars so I was wondering if you'd be willing to go with me to look at the ones I found?"

"Sure," he responds kindly, "I'd be happy to help in any way I can. Did you have a day in mind you wanted to do this?"

"Whenever is good for you would be fine," Quinn responds gratefully.

"Uh…" he stalls thinking on it. Well, not having a car is a huge inconvenience to someone who's on their own, Will figures, so he offers, "Well the sooner you get a car the better probably, right? I don't have any plans Friday if you want to go then."

"Friday would be great," Quinn says relieved- she was hoping he'd be able to do this sooner rather than later- it was quite limiting not to have a car (or her parents for a ride).

"Good," he responds happily. He's about to wish her a Happy Thanksgiving when the fact that she's probably not celebrating with her family occurs to him (probably should have sooner, but he'd had some personal things lately consuming his thoughts) and he realizes she may not have a place to go. He questions, "What about tomorrow? Do you have plans? Because I'm attempting to cook for my parents if you want to join us. I can't promise good food, but the company should be…well, honestly, drunk by mid-afternoon. But I'd be happy to have you over."

"Thank you for the offer, but I'm spending the day with Rachel and her dads actually," Quinn turns down politely (glad she had somewhere else to go because Mr. Schue with bad food and sloshed parents didn't sound especially good).

That was surprising given the history he knew existed between the two, but maybe that was a good sign for the club. He declares, "Great." The decide on a time and she tells him her address to pick her up and he finishes, "Well, have a Happy Thanksgiving and I'll see you Friday."

"You too," she returns kind of awkwardly (realizing his phrasing didn't allow for the simple response too late).

Quinn lets out a sigh of relief when she hangs up the phone. She really needed someone to go with her to make sure she didn't buy a car that wasn't all it was promised to be and just in case any salesman was wary of selling to a sixteen year old. And even though Mr. Schue had been kind and understanding on the phone and perfectly normal toward her in glee club, the idea of spending most of the day with him had her dreading the car shopping trip. She couldn't survive forever without a car though and as the temperature is dropping she's going to have to rule out walking completely soon.

With necessary things taken care of (and it happening to be her scheduled time in the kitchen) Quinn makes herself dinner feeling at ease. She had money, she made progress in taking care of necessary things, and she'd accomplished everything she needed to today.

After she eats she talks to her sister a while on Skype. Jessica's looking forward to the holiday with her in-laws, but she's still not exactly mobile so she's dreading that she'll probably be laid up on their couch throughout most of the celebration.

Then Quinn settles into some reading until her phone is ringing. (As soon as she heard it the idea popped in her head that it could be Puck. She'd noticed that they'd talked every day of break- that he'd been calling her. ) It's Puck.

"Hello," she answers (hoping she sounds normal).

"Hey," he greets casually. He was running low on reasons to call, but offers the only thing he managed to come up with all day. He inquires, "So I was wondering if you have an exit strategy for tomorrow? Or if you need one I could help out and that way I'd have a legit one too."

"Exit strategy?" she questions not really following what he was saying.

"Yeah, in case you can't stand being around Rachel any longer and you need a nice, non-friction causing reason to get out of there you need an exit strategy. You didn't even consider that? It's Rachel. You really didn't think she may get too intense or want to sing show tunes and you'd need a reason to get away?" he explains.

"No, I hadn't thought of that," she admits. Thoughtfully she adds, "And I hate to say it because it was nice of Rachel to invite me, but considering the day starts at nine in the morning, it probably would be a good idea to have some kind of excuse to leave. Any ideas?"

Luckily, Puck had been giving this whole conversation some thought all day and easily supplies, "Well, you can't go with any thing that they can check up on- like your house being on fire or a parent having a stroke or something. You can always go the sudden illness route, but you can't be too serious otherwise they'd probably end up taking you to the hospital for something you made up. So you could just say something simple, like that all the food ate was starting to make you feel like your morning sickness was making a come back so you think you should go home, lay down- something like that. Then, since you don't have a car at the moment, you can call me for a ride and be my out for my Thanksgiving."

"I thought your mom said you were going to your grandma's? Why would you need to get out of that?" Quinn questions confused.

"I don't _need _to," Puck explains, "it's just the same thing every year. Nana's senile, Matlock's constantly playing on the TV in the background, Kelyn breaks something, and my mom wants to make everything herself but also has a meltdown at some point whenever she even slightly messes anything up and then she just tries again and dinner's always three hours later than planned." He adds on (hesitating only slightly to consider that it may not be the time to say something like this- and hoping she takes it the right way), "Besides, if you're not feeling well and need a ride how could I possibly stay at my Nana's? Or anywhere?"

(Even if she was still constantly trying to convince herself that she needs space from him and that she can't give him another chance, she's been sure of exactly the sentiment he's making yet again right now- if she needs him, he'd be there.)

She can appreciate what he's saying, but she can't respond to it. So she says optimistically instead, "Well hopefully you won't need to give me a ride because we'll both enjoy our Thanksgivings. But thank you for thinking of a way to get me out of mine just in case it's not good."

That sounds kind of like an ending to this conversation, but he called prepared and since he doesn't want this to be the end of talking to her for the day, he asks, "How'd you end up with Rachel anyway? Why didn't your sister visit or come get you? Since she showed up just to get you a room I figured you'd be with her for the holiday."

Quinn feels bad that she hadn't told him the truth. But the truth was complicated and they weren't really talking much then (it occurs to her here that she supposes that's not true anymore- but she's not sure when that changed) and simple explanations were just easier. She knows she should tell him the truth though so she does. She explains how it was her brother in law that came, how her sister wouldn't be going anywhere for a while longer thanks to the cast that extended from her foot to her upper thigh, where her sister lived and how far away it was, why she had to immediately drop considering leaning on them for financial support- everything.

When she's done telling him everything, he responds, "That sucks about your sister's leg and how you haven't been able to see her. And their money troubles are unfortunate for you and them. But honestly, I'm really glad you're not eight hours away with her."

(She almost says, "Me too." Because at the moment it's how she feels. Despite being in her parent's house, despite the whispers at school, despite all the reminders of her mistakes, despite the past.)

Instead, she confesses, "I wish I could at least see her though. We've been Skyping, but it's not the same as seeing her in person and it's been nearly eight months since I've seen her. If she gets good news about how her leg is healing though maybe I'll get to see her over winter break."

"Yeah, maybe," Puck says and adds on (unsure of when winter break is exactly), "after you're done celebrating Hanukah over here though, right? Because my mom is going to be really upset if you don't accept her invitation."

"It was very nice of her to invite me. I'll probably accept her invitation soon," Quinn admits. She hesitates but explains her concern over coming, "It's just, I don't really know what Hanukah is. But I've been researching and I'm felling more prepared for it." (She had another concern initially- about spending eight nights in a row with Puck- but she hadn't really been feeling like it was something to worry about lately.)

"You researched a holiday?" Puck asks, which he follows with a cough of "Dork."

"I wanted to be prepared," she says defending her actions (and smiling at his teasing).

"I guess that makes sense," Puck concedes. "Besides," he continues, "I've had my head in books all day so I guess I can't make fun of you for researching recreationally."

"You've been reading all day?" she questions doubtfully. She'd heard everyone talking about how he was actually trying at school now, but still, it was the middle of their break, she doubted he'd be doing schoolwork.

"Yeah, the books from that guy Hank to help me learn the job. They've been making sense to me, I think, so hopefully when he tries to put me to work I'll actually have some idea of what I'm doing and he'll hire me," he explains (hoping how dedicated he is to making sure he has a way of taking care of her and the baby is clear).

"It sounds like it'd be smart of him to hire you," Quinn offers (because it is clear, why he's doing this, why he's trying so hard).

She happens to glance at a clock then and has to do a double take. They'd been talking for two hours. She can't believe it's been that long (or that she let this happen given all the decisions she'd determinedly made about him). She also can't believe that she let this go on this long because she knew she had to get up early tomorrow and now it's an hour later than when she wanted to get to bed by. She tells him how she didn't realize how late it was and reminds him about how early she has to get up tomorrow (because she didn't want it to sound like she was suddenly blowing him off- that just wouldn't be very nice of her).

He tells her goodnight and wishes her luck with her Thanksgiving plans and she does the same.

(She goes to bed smiling and feeling at ease in a way that she hasn't in a long time. But it's only been a little over a week since she became re-resolved to the idea of how big of mistake it would be to let him be involved in her life again so she's not ready to realize any of that yet.

Even if she can feel that smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she lays down and tries to fall asleep.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn wakes up at seven a.m. She wanted to make sure she had plenty of time to get ready to go and be waiting for Rachel when she came to pick her up.

Also, she wanted to have time to talk to her sister for a bit before she left for the day and was unable to talk to her. She reaches for her phone before she even gets out of bed because Jessica mentioned that she likewise needed to be up really early (she wanted to contribute to the meal despite her leg handicapping her and considering the leg, she needed plenty of time to accomplish anything) and could always use some prodding to wake up.

Yet, when Quinn turns on her phone she's stopped in her plan to call her sister by "1 New Voicemail" flashing on her phone. Sitting up a little straighter awaiting what possible news could come, she calls her voicemail and she's surprised by what she hears from Puck.

"Hey, uh, glad I didn't catch you. I figured that just in case your day gets really awful- or weird and ridiculous knowing Rachel- you could use something good to start off your day- or to come back to when the day gets bad, which I hope it doesn't. Anyway, first, I never picked this song, I'll deny it if you tell anyone. And second, I would have sung it myself, but it's not the same without the accent and I can't pull one off. Uh…I hope you enjoy it. Talk to you later."

Then "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by The Proclaimers starts playing loudly (and in it's entirety- she had no idea her voicemail allowed for such a long message). The lyrics were sweet, especially with their repetition of, "But I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, just to be the man who walks a thousand miles to fall down at your door." And with the uplifting "dad a da, da da da dun diddle un diddle un diddle uh da" it really did make for an upbeat start to the day.

Quinn doesn't realize until the song is ending and she catches sight of herself in a mirror across the room that she's smiling. An enormous, happy grin. The song ends and she bites the right corner of her lower lip, rolling it between her teeth and considering that maybe she shouldn't be having this reaction. It was from Puck and she couldn't…they were too complicated. But then she hears the recording asking her if she'd like to replay the message, save it, or delete it and she knows she's saving it, but decides to replay it first. It was from Puck, but maybe she didn't have to make it as complicated as she thought it was. Maybe it was as simple as Puck found a way to make her smile, to make her morning good, and that was it.

(As she listens a second time, she doesn't pay attention to her actions. Like how she turns the volume up, puts it on speaker, and puts the phone out as if to make sure the baby was hearing his voice and the meaningful gesture of the song.)

-o-o-o-

Rachel drives up to Quinn's house five minutes early. Luckily, Quinn was ready and waiting outside ten minutes early. (Her mother seemed surprised to see her coming down the stairs with her coat on and ready to leave. She seemed curious too as Quinn continued through the front door, but she didn't ask.)

When Rachel pulls up to the curb, a man jumps out of the passenger seat. He looks like Rachel- petite, brown hair (though not much of it), larger nose. If Rachel had glasses like him they'd look scarily alike.

He greets with a big smile, "Quinn, it's so nice to finally meet you." He leans forward and hugs her briefly.

"You too Mr. Berry," she returns politely as she awkwardly returns the light embrace (he caught her off guard with it, her right hand is stuck uncomfortably in between them).

"Oh, it's David. Where is my head, I can't believe I didn't say that yet," he brushes off. He gestures for her to take the front passenger seat and then insists she take it after she tries to decline and take the back.

Once she gets in the car Rachel skips over greeting her and dives in with, "I'd just like to say that this is only my third day with my driving permit and my third time driving so any mistakes I make are due to inexperience not lack of ability."

Quinn doesn't know how to respond to that but she settles for offering, "Okay."

Rachel signals before pulling away from the curb even though there's not another car on the entire street.

David dives in asking, "So Quinn, did Rachel tell you about any of our traditions? Like why our day starts so early?"

"I told her we watch the parade first," Rachel jumps in answering.

"Some of us don't watch, some of us criticize," David says teasingly.

"They deserve it, its gone down hill," Rachel defends fervently.

"Anyway," David moves on, "we start with a light breakfast- croissants and fruit, don't worry we don't try baking them ourselves- as we watch the parade. Then we get started on most of the food together- except the pies and cookies, we buy those. When it's all done we eat- usually around mid afternoon. Then we have some movie traditions, followed by picking at left over's and then dessert accompanied by board games. And we're very glad to have you join us for all of it this year."

It sounds like quite a day (a long day). And so different from her family who only managed to eat a quiet, proper meal together that lasted a half-hour before they retreated to separate parts of the house. She says genuinely, "It sounds great. I'm happy to be joining you for it. Thank you so much for inviting me."

"Of course," David replies, "any friend of Rachel's is always welcome in our home."

Rachel glances at her then, offering a small smile that seems to say that she knows they aren't really friends, but maybe they could be (should be). Quinn smiles a little back.

When they get to Rachel's house Quinn meets Rachel's other dad- Steve (who she calls "Daddy," while referring to David as "Dad"). They're not exactly married (legally), but it turns out that his last name was Berry and David had legally changed his last name to also be Berry and they had made it Rachel's last name as well so she could have bits of both of them in her name- the name Rachel representing David's formerly Jewish last name (Shiller) and Berry to represent Steve.

Steve is just as nice as David- greeting her with a hug. He also has the croissants and fruit on plates prepared for them to snack on as they watch the parade. Which Rachel does indeed judge quite harshly- even the child performers featured. Her dads keep trying to sway her to be less critical and simply enjoy and she does make an effort, but this seems to be a regular routine for them and they slip in and out of it throughout the broadcast.

Quinn doesn't say much as they watch the parade. She sits on the far end of the sectional couch next to Rachel, Rachel's dads on Rachel's other side, and she answers questions when they ask her anything but other than that she doesn't make many comments. She's mostly just taking it all in- the Berry's. They're such a _family_. For the first time in her life Quinn had been spending time with other peoples' families lately and she had been noticing how much warmth and ease and comfort and closeness every family seemed to have. And she found herself wishing more than ever that she had been lucky enough to have a family like that. (And, once again, she worries that maybe she never will. She used to think she would someday because it was always in her dream-future. But now, with a baby already on the way in the middle of high school, she thinks that times like these where she's a guest in someone's home is as close as she's going to get to the real family she longs for.)

After the parade is over they all head into the kitchen. Steve takes the reigns doling out tasks. He asks Quinn, "Do you cook Quinn?"

"Pretty much every night lately and I've been baking a while. I also helped do prep like things in a restaurant once," Quinn responds thoroughly.

"Well that's better than these two," Steve says with a gesture to David and Rachel, who both gasp in mock offense.

Steve puts Rachel on pealing potatoes, David on pealing sweet potatoes, Quinn on following the many steps to the stuffing recipe, and Steven takes the turkey- moving on to green beans and salad once it's in the oven.

Following the recipe she was given wasn't a problem for Quinn. It only required her to be able to chop, measure, sauté, recognize when things were cooked appropriately, mix, and bake. She'd never made stuffing before though. Her mother always hired someone to cook the meal she planned, which always included a cornbread based stuffing that wasn't anything like the one she was making now (it smelled good though, but then again she'd noticed her appetite starting to greatly increase lately so that could have had something to do with how good everything was looking).

As they tend to their various assignments there's a lot of talking. Quinn joins in quite frequently, participating in her environment now instead of just being envious of the family she's with.

Mostly David and Steve just ask Quinn questions about school. It's clear they're avoiding the subject of the baby or her parents or anything that could possibly be upsetting. She's grateful for that because for today she'd like to try and enjoy herself rather than remember all the things that have happened and all the things still to come.

Going from light topic to light topic, David and Steve somehow end up questioning Quinn about what musicals she's seen. They keep throwing titles at her and she responds to whether or not she's seen them.

"_Singing in the Rain_?" Steve asks as he checks on the turkey.

"No," Quinn answers.

"_Funny Girl_?" David tries.

"No."

"_West Side Story_?" Steve again.

"No."

"Any version of _A Star is Born_?" David questions.

"No."

Steve and David seem completely flabbergasted that Quinn somehow managed to be sixteen years old and not have seen any of the many musicals they asked her about (except _Moulin Rouge_ and _Grease_ and _Grease II_).

Seeing that they seemed to think it was unusual she offers, "I saw _Bride and Prejudice_- there was singing in that."

"I love that movie," David responds enthusiastically, "any movie that's a version of _Pride and Prejudice_ is good in my book."

"You've seen _Bride and Prejudice_ but not _Cabaret_?" Steve questions unbelievably.

Quinn doesn't know what to say. She really didn't get to watch too many movies since her parents band "inappropriate" ones in her house growing up and they considered most movies inappropriate. Plus, musicals had never been high on her list of movies to watch when she did get the time and opportunity. So she simply shrugs helplessly.

David questions his daughter, "Rachel, honey, how could you let this happen? Your glee club should be informed of the classics. It is a musical club after all."

"Yeah," Steve agrees, "you should fix that. I bet there's more kids in your club that have missed out on all the best musicals. You should start having them over for screenings."

"Great idea," David compliments his partner, "we wouldn't mind at all. You could do it once a week- Friday's or Saturday's. We could clear out and have some food here for all your friends and you can educate them about musicals."

Quinn notices Rachel's gaze suddenly concentrate on the potato in her hands and the smile that had been on her face constantly falter. She remembers what Rachel told her a few weeks ago, about how she had never told her dads about any of the terrible things Quinn had done to her because she didn't want her dads to worry about her. She realizes now, that Rachel looks guilty. There must be a lot she doesn't tell her dads so that they don't worry and that she hates withholding.

Thinking of how nice this day had been so far even though the first holiday without her own family had sounded so bleak, Quinn thinks she owes Rachel for being nice enough to invite her here despite their history. On that note, she offers, "I'd come to something like that. It'd be nice to be able to understand all of the references you and Mr. Schue and Kurt are always making."

Rachel's smile returns, grateful and in Quinn's direction. Back on track with her dad's, Rachel considers, "Yes I agree something like that would be useful. I'll have to see about what would be the night people would most likely be free. Given the amount of sports most members of the club are involved in and how musicals probably aren't their ideal weekend activity, I don't expect many would come consistently. But they are in desperate need of a musical education so I'll make the effort anyway."

"Wonderful," Steve declares, "You let us know when you settle on a day of the week for it and we can make it a date night for us so we're not hanging around with you kids."

"Date night?" David questions, "I don't remember what date nights are like it's been so long." He shoots a pointed look at his partner and they start bantering about who's fault it is that they haven't had a night out to themselves in a while (David blames Steve's work habits, Steve blames David's refusal to go out when either _Dancing with the Stars_ or _American Idol_ is on).

-o-o-o-

Dinner is delicious and contains just as delightful conversation as preparing it had.

Quinn learns quite a lot about Rachel's family. Rachel's dads are clearly (naturally) very proud of their daughter as they frequently tell stories of things she's done- singing competitions, plays, musicals. It turns out that both Rachel and Quinn had taken dance classes as children at the same time from the same company in town and probably appeared in the same recital.

Quinn also learns that Steve is an accountant for a small firm he and a couple of partners own in town and he does free-lance financial planning on the side. David works as an administrator at Lima Memorial Hospital- which he highly recommends to Quinn for when she gives birth as they just remodeled all their rooms to be private rooms, plus the medical care is excellent.

Very comfortable with the friendly family, Quinn decides to ask a question she'd been concerned about. She begins, "If you don't mind me asking, what do you do to celebrate Hanukah? I was invited to spend all eight nights with the Puckerman's and I don't really know anything about it. I've been trying to learn and I understand the history now, but I'm still not clear on how it's actually celebrated."

"Well," David starts, hesitating before he offers, "Every family celebrates differently so it's impossible to know what exactly your time with the Puckerman's would consist of."

"What my dad is trying to avoid saying is that though we are Jewish it's difficult to be practicing Jews considering that we can't all go to temple together and we're ostracized from the Jewish community and we don't know what other families do," Rachel jumps in making it obvious that it's a sensitive subject.

"We can go to temple together," Steve corrects. Seeing Quinn's slightly furrowed brow he detours and supplies, "I converted before Rachel was born." Back on track, he continues to explain, "And we can all go to temple together, it's not like they've shunned us from coming. But it's a religious institution and we're gay and there are a lot of people there who… well, when David and I would go together before Rachel was born or when we'd take Rachel when she was a baby, we'd get whispers and disapproving looks from some of the congregation. We don't want Rachel exposed to that so since she was about three only one of us has been going with Rachel. Clearly everyone there knows that David and I are together, but if we don't show up together then Rachel doesn't get exposed to their judgment of us."

"And as I've said before, I don't care. I want to go to temple with my whole family like everyone else. I don't care what anyone there thinks. If they don't like that you're gay then that's their problem, not ours," Rachel responds, sounding like she's said it many times.

"Honey," David sighs, "we've told you, this isn't your call. We've tried this and we remember what it was like. We don't want you to have those memories."

Rachel clearly has a response on the tip of her tongue, but Steve cuts in, "Rach, we can talk about this again later if you really want to, but not right now."

Understanding that they have company and this is a holiday, Rachel simply nods agreeing that she could continue this later.

Feeling horrible for having asked the question that got them on this path, Quinn apologizes, "I'm so sorry for asking about Hanukah. I hadn't thought-"

"It's fine," David cuts in. He continues reassuring, "I remember how nerve wracking it is to suddenly be joining another family for a holiday you're not familiar with. Our first holiday season together, I went with Steve to his family's Christmas- they're Catholic- and I was terrified I'd do something wrong unknowingly." He smiles and offers, "I actually accidentally ate part of the nativity scene Steve's mom had put out."

"Well she made it out of gingerbread, it was an easy mistake for you to make," Steve defends.

"It was embarrassing, but it was fine. A family who invites you to spend time with them, just wants you there. Nothing else really matters beyond that," he informs Quinn based on his own experience. To try and answer her original question better he tacks on, "And while I don't know how the Puckerman's celebrate, there will probably be fried food, a lot of families now days exchange gifts at some point- we do it on the last night, and most people light the menorah together, possibly with prayers."

"Thank you. That's very helpful," Quinn says gratefully.

Since they had stopped eating about twenty minutes ago and had just been sitting around the table talking, Steve decides it's time to move on to the next Thanksgiving tradition, "We should get all this cleaned up so we can watch our movie."

As they begin clearing the table, Rachel dives in to the story, telling Quinn, "Every Thanksgiving we watch the movie that introduced my dads- _Sleepless in Seattle_. They were in graduate school-"

"University of Illinois Chicago. Me for a masters in accounting and David for a masters in healthcare administration," Steve cuts in.

"Though I had no plan to go into healthcare and no experience in any subject the masters entailed considering I had majored in philosophy- which got me no where, neither of you girls pick that as your major," David warns.

Getting back to the story, Rachel continues smoothly, "Anyway, they were at the nearest movie theater to campus and they were the only two men watching the movie alone in the entire theater. But they were both too shy to go up to the other. Then it happened again- theater moderately packed with couples, the two of them alone. But still, they didn't take the hint of being the only two men there alone and how they had happened to be there at the same time again over a week later. The next time, several days after that, they finally got the courage to talk."

"I approached David," Steve continues, "and said, 'I don't know about you, but as much as I want to see Tom and Meg find each other again, I'm not sure I can sit through it alone."

"And I said, 'Me either.' And I offered him the seat next to me and by the end of the movie, when Tom holds out a hand for Meg, I looked down and we were holding hands," David recalls with a sweet smile to his partner.

Steve returns the smile and finishes, "And we've been happily together ever since."

As they continue to clear the table, put food away, and put the dishes in the dishwasher Steve's mother calls to wish him and everyone a happy Thanksgiving and he takes the call in another room to continue talking to her about how her day has been going. Rachel also stops helping, instead going in search of the movie that wasn't in their DVD case as it should have been. David, though having protested to Quinn helping them clean at all since she was a guest, was happy to have a minute alone with Quinn.

"Quinn," he begins as he rinses off another plate and puts it in the dishwasher, "I hope I'm not intruding or that mentioning this doesn't put a damper on the festivities, but Rachel mentioned how your parents handled your being pregnant and I just wanted to let you know that the reason we've only mentioned Steve's family all night is because mine hasn't spoken to me since I came out. I knew that once I told them they would probably be out of my life, but still, nothing really prepares you for the idea that they can just stop caring like that and not want to be in your life. So, even though my situation was different from yours, I have experience in losing a family so if you ever need anyone to talk about it who's been through something similar, you can talk to me."

"Thank you," Quinn says sincerely.

Before she can continue to thank him, David continues, "You're welcome. I was in college when I came out to my parents and they had free counseling services on campus and talking to someone really helped me through everything." He puts the last dish in the dishwasher, shuts it, and comes to stand across the island from Quinn where she was spooning left over mashed potatoes into Tupperware. He grabs her hand that's on the counter, squeezes it reassuringly, and smiles at her as he tells her, "Losing a family is horrible, but I'm sure you'll find a new one, just like I did. It won't be the same and it won't be what you thought it would be, it'll be better. I promise."

Quinn squeezes his hand back and tries to smile even though she feels more like crying (not because he had made her sad, but because she was really touched by his gesture and words- and quite emotional thanks to the pregnancy hormones). She says earnestly, "Thank you so much for everything. I hope you're right and I hope I'm as lucky as you have been. You have a wonderful family, thank you for letting me spend the day here with them."

He comes around the kitchen island and gives her a hug as he promises, "Anytime." He pulls away and warns jokingly, "And I'm going to be very upset with you if you don't take me up on that."

She laughs a little and finds it easy to smile again.

They all spend the next one-hundred and five minutes watching _Sleepless in Seattle_. Steve and David are snuggled into each other on the far end of the sectional couch while Rachel and Quinn sit on the other side.

Quinn had been wondering if Rachel actually watched movies without talking during them (she seemed like the type of person that you'd hear talking in a movie theater) and she'd been surprised when they got through several minutes and Rachel hadn't made a peep. However, the silence only lasted until just after Sam finished his conversation with Dr. Marsha on the radio. Rachel lets out a heavy sigh and comments, "You know, I've never found Tom Hanks particularly appealing. Especially now, he's kind of old. But every time I watch this movie I totally fall for his character."

"I still find Tom Hanks hot," David comments.

"Me too," Steve agrees.

"I think that's why this movie is so good," Quinn considers (surprised that rather than finding Rachel's talking annoying, she found it…comfortable, natural almost), "they didn't just make the character, Annie, fall for Sam, they make the audience fall in love with him too. And then all you want is to see the person who's like you- totally fallen for him- get the guy. Since she does, it's very satisfying."

"Hmm, I've never thought about it like that. But I think you're right," Rachel offers.

This brief conversation about the movie was easy and it led to many more throughout the film that was familiar to all viewers. Though Steve and David rarely chimed in, lost in their own world. And when the movie ended Quinn was surprised to realize how much she had talked to Rachel and how normal doing so had seemed. There was a natural flow to the conversation that Quinn didn't expect since she didn't know Rachel that well and what she did know told her that they didn't really have anything in common. Perhaps she was wrong though.

When the movie ends David explains that they always watch another movie- a romantic comedy to have a theme to the movies of the day. Yet they can never agree on one so quite a few years ago they started a tradition where they each pick a movie from their collection, put them all in a black pillowcase Steve bought specifically for this purpose, and have someone pick one of the movies blindly- whatever is picked, they watch.

Rachel gets up and gets the pillowcase, movies clearly already inside it. She tells them, "I picked _Love Actually_. It's a little early in the holiday season for it, but I really wanted to see it again."

"And I picked _Sabrina_- the original one- because I feel like watching an Audrey Hepburn movie with a happy ending, which I don't think one of my other favorite's of hers, _Roman Holiday_, really has," Steve explains.

"I picked _Return to Me_," David announces, "I like David Duchovny. He's adorable."

"You should pick a movie to add to the possibilities too," Rachel suggests. She gestures to a cabinet and adds, "They're all over there. Or at least they should be."

"Oh no, I don't need to pick anything," Quinn responds, "all of your selections sound great."

"And there are a lot more great movies in the cabinet, you should take a look and at least see if there's anything you want added to the possibilities for our next film," Steve suggest.

"Yes take your time," David insists. He and Steve rise from the couch and he continues, "We need to run a pie to the neighbor's anyway and Mrs. Cole always talks forever."

They head to the kitchen and grab a pie and they stop to grab their coats and they're out the door, leaving Quinn alone with Rachel.

Rachel instantly starts talking a mile a minute as she gets up and goes to the cabinet that was pointed out as containing all of their DVD's, "You know you don't have to choose a romantic comedy if you don't want to. We have plenty of other genres- and not just musicals. There's action movies, thrillers, dramas, a few horror movies, a few war movies. How about…_Sixteen Candles_? Or _While You Were Sleeping_? Or _Waitress_? No, that's not the best choice given…well. How about _August Rush_? Have you seen it? It's a cute movie -though I found the child's talent to develop at an unrealistic pace. But I do like Jonathan Rhys Meyers enough to overlook that- mostly."

Quinn can't help a small laugh at the random coincidence, which happens to mean that Rachel and Puck actually share the same opinion on something- an idea that's hard to process.

Rachel wasn't so absorbed in her rambling that she didn't notice the small laugh and she asks, "What?"

Quinn would rather say that it's nothing because she really doesn't want to bring Puck up (Rachel may take it as an invitation to talk about him and the baby, which she doesn't want to do today). Yet if she says nothing then it could also come across that she was laughing at Rachel, especially given their history, and Quinn doesn't want to ruin this amicable state they've miraculously managed to reach despite all the reasons they have to be enemies. So Quinn offers honestly, "Puck thinks the same thing about _August Rush_. Not the part about Jonathan, but that how quickly the kid mastered instruments and music was annoying."

"Well I think most people who know how to play an instrument or have attempted to learn would share that opinion. Although less critical people probably wouldn't care," Rachel supposes. Back to the task at hand, Rachel asks, "Would you like me to add that one to the possibilities or would you like to look through the rest of our movies?"

Quinn didn't want to add a movie because she didn't want everyone to have to watch something she picked. They were nice enough to have her over all day and they'd been so kind, one of them should at least get to see the movie they wanted to. But apparently she wasn't getting out of picking a movie. So Quinn gets up and joins Rachel on the floor in front of the cabinet. Scanning the titles (of which there are tons- they have hundreds of DVD's), Quinn comments, "I've never seen most of these. I've heard of a lot of them, but I don't really get the chance to watch many movies."

After a minute Rachel suggests helpfully, "If you know what type of movie you'd like to see or what you wouldn't like to see maybe I could help narrow down your selection so it's easier to chose something."

Quinn considers what she'd like to see. Romance didn't actually sound that good. Her romantic life was complicated and she didn't want to watch anything that would reminder her of that fact. (The last movie being an exception since it was something she'd seen many times and lost all meaning besides being a comforting classic.) She decides, "I think I'd prefer something that's…not real. Nothing about normal people in troubled relationships or searching for love, rather something set in…a different world, one that doesn't resemble right now."

"_Princess Bride_!" Rachel exclaims because it instantly popped into her head as fitting Quinn's criteria.

"Maybe," Quinn considers, "I've seen it a lot though."

Right. And with all of the movies they have that she hasn't seen, Rachel understands why something new would be preferable. She thinks about it for a second and pulls out a movie and hands it to Quinn as she says, "_Stardust_. It's not really the best movie ever, but it was entertaining and it's definitely not set in reality."

"I had actually wanted to see this," Quinn comments, "I guess this will be my pick then."

With nothing to keep them occupied, the air begins to turn awkward (because despite how nice the day had been so far, they're not friends). Rachel takes notice in the change and tries to distract from it/stop it. She asks the first thing that pops in her head, "Are you hungry again yet?"

"No, I'm fine," Quinn responds. She still felt like she ate so much at dinner that the idea of eating again that day at all sounded really unappealing (though she hoped that went away by the time they served dessert- she'd hate to be impolite by not partaking in some of it).

"Really?" Rachel questions, "But you're eating for two and I'm not and I'm already hungry."

"Maybe your metabolism is just faster or maybe I ate a lot more than you earlier," Quinn proposes

"Pretty sure that's not true," Rachel responds (because if she had the faster metabolism between them, she wouldn't have found herself once trying to create an eating disorder out of jealousy of the other girl's figure). She brushes off the whole thing though as she gets up saying, "Oh well though, it's a holiday so I'm going to indulge."

Rachel heads back to the kitchen and Quinn gets up of the ground to return to the couch. Seconds later Rachel returns from the kitchen with a plate of cookies. She's already eating one as she sets the plate down on the coffee table in front of the couch and sits back in her old spot near Quinn.

They're saved from having to come up with a topic of conversation by Rachel's phone chirping. She pulls it out, looking hopeful, and reads what was sent to her and her face falls slightly.

"Not what you were expecting?" Quinn asks, noticing how Rachel seemed displeased.

"No it's a perfectly nice message from Tina. I had texted everyone in glee club "Happy Thanksgiving"- except you since you were coming here- and Tina just returned the message. Just about everyone has returned it now," she answers, and it's the way she says the last sentence that makes Quinn think she knows who hasn't returned the simple sentiment.

"I'm sorry," Quinn apologizes, "Finn probably hasn't texted you back because he found out I'm here." She adds regretfully, honestly, "The way he's been lately, it's all my fault. He's different because of what I did to him."

"That's partially true," Rachel agrees, "Finn has been different lately and his anger is from what you did to him." She sighs and admits, "But Finn not talking to me and how we're not together- that's his fault. And maybe a little bit my fault. But he was willing to flirt with me and kiss me while he was with you so naturally as soon as he wasn't with you anymore I tried to begin a real relationship with him. He didn't want that though, he made that perfectly clear."

Quinn found that hard to believe. It was pretty obvious that Finn wanted to be with Rachel while he was with her so if he didn't want to be now, after he found out the truth about everything, then that had to be related. She considers, "Maybe he doesn't want to be in a relationship with you now because of what his last relationship did to him, what I did to him. Maybe he's not ready to trust someone again after how much I betrayed that trust."

"Yeah that's what he basically said too," Rachel said shaking her head, "but I don't buy it. He didn't love you. And I know that sounds harsh and I'm sorry-"

"It's fine. I knew we weren't in love like we always said we were," Quinn cuts in assuring. (Though Rachel could have put it more tactfully. The bluntness did come off kind of harsh.)

"And I knew he didn't love you because he's not the type of guy to cheat on the girl he loved by kissing someone else. Though I have been considering that I'm wrong about who he is. Anyway though, he's been acting like he got his heart broken and therefore his attitude and actions of late are excusable, but he couldn't have gotten his heart broken because his heart wasn't in your relationship that much. He got hurt, but he's not as messed up as a result of it as he's claiming to be. That's just an excuse, one he's using so he can't be with me because, apparently, he doesn't want to be," Rachel rambles, kind of exploding everything she'd been thinking on to Quinn. She hadn't had anyone to talk to about this. She couldn't talk to her dads because she'd kind of left out some information on the whole thing- anything that would make them worry. And she didn't really have any friends so that ruled out everyone at school or that she knew outside of school. Then Ms. Pillsbury had proved to be less than insightful in the past so Rachel didn't even consider talking to her. Which left her with no one to talk to about anything that had been going on. But Quinn had gotten them on this path and Rachel couldn't help running with it.

That was a lot to take in. Thinking about who she has in her life, Quinn realizes that she's possibly the first person Rachel's told any of this to. Though she still feels so incredibly guilty about the things she's done that it practically consumes her, she has to admit that Rachel has a point. What she did to Finn probably hurt him a lot, but that stopping him being with Rachel when the two of them being in a relationship and with a baby on the way (as far as he knew at the time) had barely stopped him from being with Rachel before so it really didn't make sense that anything would stop him from being with Rachel now. Perhaps Rachel was on to something in thinking that he was using his hurt as an excuse, though she didn't agree with the reason Rachel thought. "I've been awful to you this school year," Quinn begins, "and I did that because it was extremely obvious that Finn really liked you. So I don't think that he doesn't want to be with you. There's got to be something else going on with him that's making him use an excuse not to be with you." She adds sincerely, "And I'm sorry for everything I did to you."

"Well, I kind of had some of it coming- going after your boyfriend and all, for a while after I thought you were having a baby with him even. And then briefly using the actual father of your baby to make your boyfriend jealous in hopes that he'd break up with you. I'm really not proud of myself for a lot of that. And I appreciate knowing that you aren't proud of yourself for things that transpired then either," Rachel reasons. "Truce?" she suggests, offering her hand.

Quinn shakes Rachel's hand and agrees happily, "Truce." They both had regrets about the past and if Rachel was going to forgive her hers, then she was more than willing to move on.

Rachel smiles and then she hesitates. She wants to drop the past completely (it didn't make her look her best so it was better left in the past), but there was something nagging at her. Of course, given her very limited amount of self-control and tendency to be nosy, she asks, "I don't understand why you were with Finn this school year at all though. I mean, you said you knew he was interested in me, that's why we…had our trouble. So why not just break up with him and be with Puck?"

Quinn could see how Rachel would think that everything was that simple. She had spent a lot of time in the past five or so months wondering why it couldn't just be that easy (and wishing that it could be). She doesn't want to get into all of the complicated reasons though (thinking on them had never helped sort anything out, it just made her more confused). So she offers vaguely, "Because none of it was ever that easy."

"Yeah, I suppose that based on Puck's account of your history with him to Finn it wasn't easy. I mean, I even kind of got lost in it a few times and since I only had them there for five minutes I know Puck was only giving the highlights, but still, it didn't sound especially simple," Rachel considers.

"You had Puck talk about us when you made him and Finn talk?" Quinn questions surprised. She knew Rachel wanted glee club to be less tense, but somehow she figured that that meant Rachel was going to make them use "I feel" statements or that, as she often did, Rachel would simply do most of the talking and would end up simply trying to order the two boys to get along.

"Yes," Rachel answers. Her brow furrows as she asks, "I didn't tell you that?"

"No," Quinn answers.

"Oh. I could have sworn I mentioned it. I did tell you it went well though, right?" Rachel checks.

"Yes," Quinn confirms still stunned and confused, "but how could it have possibly gone well if that was what you had them talk about?" Finn still wouldn't glance her way, which she took as a sign not to try and apologize again yet, so she didn't understand how hearing everything they did to him could possibly make Finn feel better right now. It really didn't seem like he was ready for that.

"Finn didn't get upset and he didn't hit Puck, I took that as progress," Rachel answers. Rachel adds, thinking of it, "Plus at the start of the story Puck mentioned something I didn't understand, something about his mom that apparently Finn was semi-informed on, and before he left Finn asked Puck if his mom was okay now. I figure that the fact that he's still concerned is a good sign. Maybe they won't be friends again soon, but I think they'll work their way back to being friends eventually. I think we could get them there faster, but I'd need some place to lock them in together, preferably a small space, or have them do something that would make them work together for survival, but there aren't exactly woods around here and I haven't figured out a way to get them out in the middle of nowhere yet."

Quinn doesn't know what to say to the last half of what Rachel said. On the one hand it would be nice if Finn could like Puck again and they were friends (and if maybe that helped him not be mad at her any more too, that would be great). But on the other hand Rachel's potential plans sounded kind of dangerous. They also sounded impractical though so perhaps they wouldn't happen and she wouldn't need to question Rachel about them right now. So instead she offers Rachel based on the first part of what she said, "I hope you're right about them making progress."

Rachel knows it's not her place to tell Quinn things that Puck said while she played mediator to his talk with Finn- especially the part where he said he loved Quinn. That's their business, not hers. Plus, what if he hadn't told Quinn yet? If she was in Quinn's position, she wouldn't want to hear learn that someone was in love with her through anyone except the person who felt that way about her. So she's definitely not going to say anything about that.

However, Rachel's never been able to stay completely out of other people's business. She tells Quinn, "Puck _really_ cares about you."

That's another complicated thing to respond to. Sometimes Quinn believed that about him, and other times he'd prove that that wasn't true. So Quinn opts not to respond at all. She drops her gaze to the seat of the couch. Smiles a little- telling herself she's doing so because while she doesn't want to talk about this, she doesn't want Rachel to think she did something wrong, they were just beginning a possible friendship here. (Really, she smiles a little for more than just that reason. Because even if history has made her unsure of whether Rachel was right, she wants Rachel to be and the idea that she could be makes her smile.)

A beat of silence passes and Quinn tries to come up with a distracting topic. "So what are you thinking of doing for the Madonna assignment?" she asks, because glee or music were pretty safe bets to turn Rachel firmly onto a new path and make her forget about the comment she made.

From there they talk about Madonna for the entire twenty minutes until Rachel's dad's get back. It's not like Rachel was when they were doing the mash-up with the rest of the girls where she was ordering them around and making all of the decisions. She's discussing music and performing like she truly loves it (and not simply winning as frequently comes across) and it's fun. Quinn is surprised to realize how truly enjoyable the conversation is.

(Except one brief part where Rachel mentioned that one song she really felt like doing sometimes was "Take a Bow." But she moves on quickly saying she'd rather do something more up beat though and she doesn't want to turn things that direction anyway- avoid ugliness if possible. She's the captain of glee club, she has to do what's best for everyone so she should really try to choose group songs and an individual one that would benefit the group and not just her feelings.)

When David and Steve come back they make popcorn and give Quinn the honors of blindly reaching into their movie sack to pick one out. She happens to grab David's choice- _Return to Me_. It ends up making everyone cry a little bit, but the happy ending makes up for that. Although Rachel still chides her father for picking a movie that was so tragic at parts that they all ended up reaching for the tissues.

Dessert is finally served after the second movie as it approaches eight at night. Quinn is relieved to find that she is actually hungry so that she can politely try all of their selections (pumpkin pie, apple pie, sugar cookies). They play board games as they eat their dessert.

They start with Sactergories, which Quinn had never played before, but there are rules in the folder she was given and they all explain it easily as this particular game was a family favorite. They roll a twenty-six sided die and for whatever letter comes up they have to complete a list of twelve different items that begin with that letter. They explain ways to get more than one point per space, what doesn't count, etc. Quinn thinks she understands it, but then when they roll the first letter and start the timer, Quinn gets to work on her list like everyone else, finishes, and looks up to find everyone still writing. She wonders if she's supposed to be doing something else, something she hadn't realized or they hadn't told her about.

It turned out, she was just faster than everyone else. And better. She finds herself in the lead and eventually winning the game. Steve finds it unbelievable that he- who has two college degrees- is both slower than and losing to a girl in high school. Granted, one who was smart, but still his usually slaughter opponents at all board games. (David whispers to Quinn during one of Steve's frustrated moments where he's getting online to check one of Quinn's responses that now she can see where Rachel gets her competitive spirit from. Something that is further demonstrated when Steve returns disgruntled that Quinn was right and Ossetic was an actual language.)

Rachel's competitive spirit comes out in the next game- charades. Quinn and Rachel are on a team together and for a while Rachel tries to be a good sport when she doesn't understand something Quinn is doing or Quinn doesn't guess what she's portraying correctly even though she thought she was being obvious, but only three rounds in the game Rachel's understanding begins to dwindle (as does Steve's for his partner) and they call it quits after six rounds.

After the game, David comments that it's getting late with a yawn. Rachel clearly isn't ready for the day to end though as comments that Quinn hasn't even seen her room yet and she needed to burn her some songs for glee club. Then she makes the very valid point that it was only nine thirty and therefore not late at all. Her dads concede, but warn that it had been a long day and they didn't want to wait too long before giving Quinn a ride home. Quinn insists that that's more than fine with her, she needs to get up early tomorrow anyway so she doesn't want to be there too late.

(As she follows Rachel up to her room, Rachel suggests that she spend the night. The offer is surprisingly tempting. She doesn't think that she and Rachel are friends yet, and therefore it would probably be a little weird to stay over, but her home was much more comfortable than Quinn's ever was so it was an attractive offer.

Realistically though, she has plans tomorrow that she needs to follow through on so she declines Rachel's offer, but tells her that maybe some other time they could plan ahead for something like that.)

Quinn spends about an hour in Rachel's room with her. It looks scarily like how her mother had designed her bedroom when she was younger. Despite being surrounded by an excess of pink, they have a good time talking about Madonna again and other music they'd like to see done by the glee club.

On her way out, David gives her a hug and tells her to come again soon. With Steve in the car, Rachel drives them back to Quinn's house (she immediately warns that it's her first time driving at night so don't judge her should she do anything wrong). Steve gets out and gives her a hug and reiterates what David told her. Rachel gets out of the car too. She's not as much of a hugger as her dads and she knows Quinn isn't really her friend yet, but her dads think that they are so she gives her a quick hug as well. Quinn hugs back (these days, she wouldn't turn down a hug from just about anyone) and feeling like she should be trying even harder to make actual friends (because she knows she's going to need people to lean on when all of this ends, however it ends) and because she knows Rachel has a bit of ruse going on with her dads, she tells Rachel that she'll talk to her soon intending to figure out something to call her about before they return to school. Rachel seems startled by this but manages to respond, "Great. And I'll be calling you too. I want to make sure we do Madonna justice next week."

The house is dark when Quinn enters it. It appears her parents are already in bed. She goes up to her room in her house that feels empty.

Quinn had turned her phone on silent hours ago after responding to some "Happy Thanksgiving" texts from Kurt and Artie and May and a few random texts from her sister detailing how her Thanksgiving was going. As she plugs it in to charge it, she realizes that while it was on silent she missed a call and that she had a new voicemail. She calls her voicemail and isn't really surprised to find the voice that started her day was the one ending it.

"Hey," he greets, "So I guess you didn't need an out. I'm glad. I hope you weren't just sticking it out and that you had a good time at Rachel's. My nana mixed some pills she wasn't supposed to so she slept through most of the day and then for the brief time she was up she, for some reason, didn't want to wear her clothes. She totally…assaulted my vision. Still, not the worst Thanksgiving ever. But I'll tell you about that horror show tomorrow. I've got to get to bed 'cause it's a Puckerman family tradition to go fight the shopping crowds of Black Friday. So…goodnight. Have a good Friday."

(She's smiling when she hits "save message." Even though he didn't say anything particularly sweet or special, she's smiling. Only she doesn't notice that right now.)

Quinn falls asleep thinking about how this turned out to be the best Thanksgiving she's ever had. (And as she runs a hand over her stomach, she tries not to think about how it might be her last good one. Whether she keeps the baby or gives it up as she knows she probably should, by this time next year her life could be so different that one happy day could be impossible to achieve. It terrifies her.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn runs into her mother on her way into the kitchen Friday morning to grab a quick breakfast. Her mom doesn't ask her where she went yesterday, where she was all day, and it's a sad thought to realize that she's not surprised by that. However, as she digs through the shelf in the fridge that was hers looking through her yogurt flavors she finds an opaque Tupperware dish. She opens it up and finds it filled with Thanksgiving foods (turkey, yams, cranberry sauce, etc.). It was hidden in the back and in a dark non-see through container so what was in it couldn't be discovered so clearly her mother had done this without her father's consent and didn't want to get caught having done it. At least it was something though. Quinn doesn't want to let it, combined with the insurance thing, get her hopes up about her relationship with her mother changing eventually so she tells herself that her mom is just being polite (but deep down, she desperately hopes it's a sign that her mom will be her mom again one day- or for the first time).

Just like she did when Rachel came to pick her up, Quinn waits out on the sidewalk in front of her house for Mr. Schue. Again, she wants to avoid anyone who comes there having the possibility of interacting with her parents because it's just easier that way.

He pulls up to the curb exactly on time and greets her warmly as she climbs into the passenger seat, "Good morning Quinn."

"Good morning," she returns as she buckles herself in. She adds gratefully, "And thank you again for doing this."

"It's no problem," Mr. Shue assures with a smile. "So where are we headed?" he asks.

She tells him how she found three pretty good deals in Columbus. One she preferred over the other two that she'd like to start with and she had directions to the all three dealers.

"To Columbus it is then," he declares as he pulls away from the curb. "So how was your Thanksgiving?" he asks conversationally.

"Great," she answers, "Rachel and her dads had fun traditions, good food, and they were really nice." (She's nervous as she talks to him. They haven't really talked since the whole thing came out about her role in his wife's insane plan. She wants to apologize for her part in it, but she doesn't want to randomly spit it out. She figures she'll definitely say it when an opportunity arises. Though her hands to shake a little at that thought.)

"Yeah, I've met them, they're great guys," Mr. Schue agrees.

"How was your Thanksgiving?" Quinn returns.

"Better than expected. I didn't ruin the food. The pies were a little…inedible, but the rest of the food came out pretty good actually. I may have to start cooking more, I think I have a knack for it. And then my parents ended up bringing one of my aunts and uncles with them so we had a pretty full table. It was nice," he says, though the last word sticks in his mouth just a little like it wasn't entirely the honest word choice. But he glances over at Quinn with a smile, as if trying to encourage the idea that he really was fine.

He changes the topic asking, "So what cars are we looking at?"

"Two of them are Toyota Corrolla's. An '07 and an '08. But the one I wanted to start with is a Honda Civic. Given the Toyota recall, even though some of them are better prices, I'd rather not get one unless I don't have any other options," Quinn answers.

Those cars were way better than his, but Will didn't want to think on that. Instead he inquires, "What made you decide on those cars?"

"I wanted something practical, with good gas mileage, low miles, something that would last me a long time, and something with a lower price so I wouldn't have to spend too much of the money I got for my car," Quinn responds and bites her lip because those weren't her only reasons for picking these cars. She hesitates, but adds, "And I don't know what I'm going to do yet," she glances down at her stomach, "so I wanted something safe and that would be…child appropriate if I…keep her."

"That's very responsible thinking," Mr. Schue compliments. He taps his fingers on the steering wheel nervously. He has more to say, but this was going to be awkward and he hadn't been looking forward to it (had even been kind of avoiding it actually). He's the adult here and this needs to get said though. He takes a deep breath and dives in, "Quinn, I really should have said this sooner, but I'm so sorry for what Terri did. Her asking you for your baby and manipulating you into agreeing to that, it's just…insane and I'm so sorry she got you involved in that."

"I'm sorry too," Quinn apologizes and seeing Mr. Schue open his mouth, probably to respond with something about her not needing to apologize, she rushes on, "She told me she was faking her pregnancy and I knew that for over a month and I didn't say anything to you. She didn't manipulate me into agreeing to give her my baby. She did initially convince me she was more sane than she ended up seeming, but she didn't need to persuade me. Giving her away was my only option. I couldn't give Finn up even though I knew that what I was doing to him was wrong but I couldn't let Finn be responsible for the baby either, so I had to give her up. And when I thought about you getting her and being her dad, I actually felt a little bit better about the idea of giving her away."

"Quinn," he sighs, "First I'm…touched you think that about me, that you wanted me to raise your baby." He glance at her and offers a kind smile before he continues, "And even if you went along with Terri, I don't want you thinking any of it was your fault. Her plan was hers so she's responsible for everything that happened as a result of it." He thinks over the things she said and adds, "I don't think you should feel as guilty as you seem to for anything lately either. I know I don't know the whole story about how…everything happened, but everyone makes mistakes, you don't need to feel so bad for yours."

"People accidentally say something that hurts someone else's feelings or accidentally leave the iron on when they leave the house or get a trendy haircut even though there's no chance it would look good on them. People don't make the kind of mistakes I've made. They don't lie to someone they care about to trick them into thinking they're going to be a father. They don't hurt…_everyone_ around them. The things I've done have been worse than mistakes," Quinn responds, her voice filled with the tears that she's desperately trying to hold in. It was nice of Mr. Schue to try and write off the things she had done, but she doesn't feel like she deserves it at all. Everything she's done lately has changed everyone's life around her and for all of them it was for the worse- or at least that's what she thinks, what she feels.

Mr. Schue takes a second to consider what she said, because he doesn't want to write off her actions, she clearly knew that that wouldn't be right, nor did it seem like it would help her. He offers, "People do make just as serious of mistakes as you have. Believe me, we're all guilty of things like that." He sighs and backtracks a bit, "And we all have stuff like that because we're pushed into it…or at least we feel like we are. You mentioned how you couldn't let Finn go, that's why you couldn't tell him the truth. I understand that, hanging on to something because you're scared about what will happen if you let go. That's pretty much why Terri and I were still together the last few years. And hanging on like that, for so long when we should have stopped ignoring our problems, that's how things got so bad and it definitely helped push her to what she did." He shakes his head a little, sighs, and admits, "Even though Terri was the one who faked a pregnancy and everything, our marriage ending was as much my fault as hers." Quieter, he lets slip, "I haven't even managed to be mistake free since then."

That got kind of depressing and probably counted as an over-share considering he was her teacher and school club adviser. Hearing about how someone else had managed to make mistakes too was probably comforting, but not helpful and Will wanted to be helpful. He's purposefully peppy as he adds optimistically, "But you know, mistakes aren't that bad. They don't have to be tragic…life events."

It was actually nice to know that Mr. Schue was capable of making big blunders like she had. At the same time though, it was kind of depressing to realize that the cause of her problems wasn't just the fact that she was a naïve teenager, that these kinds of things could likely follow her into adulthood as they clearly had for Mr. Schue. As much as she thinks that Mr. Schue sounds like he's making things up as he talks to her, trying to be helpful because he feels that's his place, Quinn really would like her mistakes to be more than just mistakes. So she inquires, "How do you deal with your mistakes?"

"Well," he draws out, considering it, "First, I try to learn from my mistakes. Like, why did I stay with Terri even though it was pretty obvious our relationship wasn't what it once was? Why did I ignore the problems and tell myself we were happy? And after thinking about it, I realized that I just wanted it to work so I told myself it did. I didn't want to lose all of the dreams for the future I had been thinking about since I was about your age. I thought Terri was my soul mate and I just wasn't ready to give up on that. Which I think has something to do with my parents too, they're not perfect and they argue and hurt each other, but they've stuck their marriage out too and they are pretty happy overall. So I just kept thinking we'd get better, in time, and without having to work at it at all. Now, I know I can't ignore things when they're wrong, relationships need work, and not being willing to accept change in a person or a relationship just leads to more heartache."

He sighs and pauses for a few beats of silence, thinking about how to phrase what else he wants to say. "And the other thing I try to do," he begins, "is try to let my mistakes…" he pauses again, realizing he's about to basically use the same phrase again, "I don't really know how to explain this, but I guess I try to make the most out of them. Not just learning from the mistakes themselves, but letting the whole experience make me a better person, more aware, and move forward from them- because hanging on to mistakes only seems to make there impact worse. For example, I'm still pretty angry with Terri at the moment and one of my more recent mistakes was not letting that go, not acknowledging that I was feeling that way at all, and then…well, I messed some things up because of that. But now I know that I have to find a way to be okay with what Terri did and the fact that our marriage ended and my role in that. I have to become someone who's not going to avoid going into Sheets 'N Things just because she may be working. I need to deal with us and move past us so I can find happiness again." He continues with a small smile, "See, I'm learning. My mistakes are going to make me into a better person; I really believe that. And maybe because of them I'm not going to have the future I once thought I would, but I'm not the same guy I was at eighteen when I dreamt of me and Terri and a whole family and everything either. Now I can figure out who I am now, what I want now, and I'm sure I'll make those dreams come true and it will be great."

It takes a few seconds of silence for Will to realize everything he's been saying and when he does he says, "I'm sorry. I'm rambling, about myself. I shouldn't be…venting to you about everything. What I originally wanted you to know was just that you shouldn't punish yourself so much for your mistakes. You're a good person, and the things you've done haven't changed that."

"Thank you," Quinn responds gratefully with a small smile. Mr. Schue easily gets back into rambling- this time prompted by a song that came on the radio, he's a big fan of The Beach Boys apparently. Quinn doesn't interrupt his rant just like she didn't before, but this time she doesn't interrupt because she's distracted, still thinking about all the things he said in the first one. He had, unknowingly, hit home for her a few times. She really hoped he was right about her mistakes not making her a bad person and perhaps he was right about not letting them define her as well.

(She also thinks about the part where he said his dreams changed. She'd thought about this before. Ever since she found out she was pregnant she realized what she had once dreamt for her future wasn't possible anymore. She knew she needed a new dream. The problem was picking one when her options for any version of a future left her deciding between becoming a- likely- struggling single teenage mother or giving up a child that was hers- and Puck's- forever.)

Thinking about the things she's done wrong and how she has learned from some things, Quinn thinks (unwillingly) about Puck. She had been cautious with him lately because of her past mistakes of trusting him too much and getting hurt. What if he realized his actions when he hurt her were mistakes though? What if all the things he was doing now were out of knowing how wrong he'd been, regretting it, and trying to make it right? Mr. Schue had said he'd messed up (she had a feeling it was with Ms. Pillsbury, the glee kids had been gossiping about awkwardness there the last week of school) and now he was going to be better because he'd learned from those mistakes. What if Puck was the same? Maybe he was truly a better guy than he'd been before and here she was not…doing anything about that, not wanting to know that because she didn't want to take a chance and get hurt again. So in the end she's left with either sticking to learning from her mistakes and not giving him another chance or believing he had realized and learned from his and wouldn't break her heart again. (She wished there was another option. Something that didn't feel so much like all or nothing.)

-o-o-o-

It takes nearly two hours to get to Columbus from Lima.

As they park near the first dealer Quinn wanted to visit, she warns Mr. Schue that if, while negotiating, she starts crying, just play along. It sounds bad of her, she knows, but it's a very useful tactic and she'll use it if it means possibly saving money. Mr. Schue doesn't object, but she has a feeling he's not completely comfortable with it (or the way he's just noticed she's dressed- to emphasize her small bump with a rather tight fitting sweater dress).

They wander on the lot for a good ten minutes, not finding the 2008 Honda Civic for $10,000 with fifty-eight thousand-and-change miles that Quinn had come to see. There were plenty of Fords (they were at a Ford dealer after all, the Honda being one of many of the variety of used cars on the lot), but Quinn didn't want a Ford. Her reason was stupid, she knew that, but she really didn't want an American car- her father would approve of that as he had a thing about only buying American made cars.

As was inevitable, they were approached by a car salesman. He was in an average suit, of average height, and a little over weight. He looked to be in his early forties and he came up to them with a pep in his step and a big, friendly smile. "Hello folks and welcome to Graham Ford. My name is Kyle Olson, is there anything I can help you with today?"

Will takes charge greeting, "Hi Kyle. I'm Will and this is Quinn and she came here looking to buy a car today, but it was a specific car she found advertised online and we can't seem to find it on the lot."

"It's good to meet you both," Kyle responds cordially, shaking both of their hands. He directs to Quinn, "So what car were you looking for?"

"It was a 2008 Honda Civic, white, with about sixty thousand miles," Quinn answers.

Kyle's face crinkles thoughtfully and says to himself, "Hmm…Honda Civic, Honda Civic." He offers, "Well, I don't recall seeing that specific car around the lot, but we have quite a big inventory and decent turn-over and I've never been able to memorize all the cars. I'll head inside real quick, find out where it is, and come back out with the keys so you can check it out. How about you two continue to browse? Maybe you'll find something else you'll like."

Quinn looks around as suggested, but doesn't come across anything in her slow browsing. Will looks around too. Now that he didn't have Terri spending fifty percent of his paychecks on frivolous things, perhaps he could get a new car finally. Although he did have the added expense of a lawyer for the divorce right now and he had warned him he'd be paying alimony and their two bedroom apartment he was still living in and paying for wasn't exactly cheap- Terri had made them rent there because it was the only luxury apartment building in town. Maybe later he'd be able to afford a slight car upgrade though.

It takes nearly twenty minutes for Kyle to find them again and when he does he doesn't look pleased. "Well, I have some unfortunate news folks," he begins, "we sold that Honda on Wednesday. The person who's job it is to manage all of our advertisements has had the whole week off so our internet listings aren't accurate at the moment."

That sucked, but Quinn figures she should move on to the Toyota dealer that had the two used Corrollas she was looking at.

"I do have some other things I could show you that are similar to the Civic though," Kyle pitches. "Do you want to take a look at some other vehicles or did you have your heart set on the '08 Civic?"

Quinn doesn't want to get persuaded into anything so she's ready to decline and head to the next dealer, but Mr. Schue steps in and whispers to her, "We can go if you want, but if their on line listings aren't right, right now, they may have a better deal than the other cars you wanted to look at. I'm not in any rush, we have the whole day, so if you want to take the time to be thorough here, that's more than fine with me."

Well when he puts it like that- like she could possibly be missing something better if she rushes off- he makes a good point. Quinn tells Kyle, "Let's take a look at some other cars."

"Great! Come this way," he starts leading them to a car he wants to show them. When they start to get closer to it he tells them, "I have a 2008 Ford Focus that has about ten thousand less miles than the Civic you were interested in and it's twelve hundred dollars less too."

Quinn stops following him and interjects, "I'm not actually interested in any Fords."

"Oh," Kyle says coming to a halt. "Sorry about that, I should have asked what you were looking for that had you interested in the Civic. I apologize. So what is it you are looking for?" he continues smoothly, ever the salesman.

Quinn rattles off her list of things- good gas mileage, low miles, four doors, safe, etc. And adds that she doesn't really like American cars.

Kyle considers everything for a moment and leads them to a nearby car as he details, "We have this gold, 2006 Honda Civic. It's less than the one you came to see- it's $8500. Civics always do very well in safety tests. It…has a few more miles than you'd like on it, but that makes it cheaper too so it's a trade off."

It had just over ninety thousand miles actually and Quinn hadn't been looking at anything with over sixty thousand miles because she wanted whatever car she got to last her a really long time.

Kyle moves on and shows her a Hyundai and a Mazda, both of which are slightly cheaper than the initial Civic, but they also feel cheaper (and like they should therefore cost less than they actually do). He also shows her a Nissan Sentra that's a 2006, falls under her sixty thousand miles limit, and is $8,500 so it's a better price than the car she came here for or the two across town. But it's a hideous bright blue- blue slushie blue- and she's honestly not sure if she could live with it.

Then Kyle shows her something out of her price range. He begins, "I know this is a little more than the car you had in mind, but just let me show it to you. I think it's perfect for you." So Quinn lets him and he leads them over to a dark gray Toyota Prius. Kyle gives his pitch as he opens the door for her to look inside, "It's a 2007 Prius and I know you've probably heard about the recall so first I want to assure you that the owners took this car in and had it fixed. It's been thoroughly checked out and there is nothing about it that's a concern. It's only got 32,780 miles on it. It's fully loaded- with the navigation system there, a CD changer, iPod dock, back-up camera, intelligent parking. And since it's a hybrid it gets fantastic gas mileage- up to fifty miles per gallon on this model. It's also very safe- excellent safety ratings."

Quinn thought that Kyle was either a really good salesman or the car was just that great because she definitely thought it sounded good. She had liked the idea of a hybrid because one could certainly save her gas money. (Plus it would piss off her dad- who claimed global warming was a hoax and that people were crazy for all the green "crap.") Not to mention that this car had such low miles, it could last her through…well, actually, she's not sure what the future will hold for her but it could last her until her early twenties at least. The fact that the back seats fold down would be useful when she moves again and the navigation would be nice. (The leather seats would be easy to clean if she keeps the baby and it ever makes a mess in there.) But even though Kyle hadn't mentioned the price, she could see it on the paper in the window. "It's $11,500 and $10,000 was really the most expensive car I was even considering looking at. I can't spend any more money than that," she tells them. She can afford the car at it's sticker price technically, but she wants to save as much money as possible so she had decided that she wouldn't spend more than ten thousand on a car so she still had twenty four thousand for everything to come.

"Well," Kyle drawls, "I can probably do something about the price, work it down for you. How'd you like to test drive it first though?"

Since he's willing to negotiate and Quinn hadn't even tried crying yet and the car fits what she wanted so well so she decides to go for the test drive. The drive confirms that she really, really likes the car. Mr. Schue even seems to really like it as he keeps pointing things out about it that are definite pros as he rides in the backseat on the test drive.

When they get back Kyle goes inside and talks with his superior about the price, does some math, checks some things and comes back out and tells them that he can get it down to $10,800 for them, but that's really as low as he could possibly go.

That's more than she wanted to spend and she had good reasons for her decisions, Quinn wanted to stick to them. So she's ready to leave, but Will steps in and says that they'll need to think about it. He asks Kyle if he can hold it for a couple of hours while they have lunch. Kyle promises to make sure no one else can show it to anyone else until three 'o clock, which gives them just over two hours.

As they're heading off the lot to Mr. Schue's car, she tells him, "I don't need time to think about it. I've considered how much I should spend and I can't go over ten thousand."

"Well maybe, but it doesn't hurt to have the option of getting it for a while longer so you can think things over again," Mr. Schue responds.

He doesn't mention the car as he starts his, instead he excitedly tells her about a burger place he used to frequent when he was in college in Columbus. He's detailed the entire menu by the time they get there and all the things he liked about it.

They get to The Thurman Café and Mr. Schue insists on paying for Quinn's lunch. He tells her stories about being in college in Columbus (appropriate ones) while they wait for their food and while they eat. When they're done eating, he checks his watch and offers, "It's two, only one more hour to decide."

"I can't spend that much money," Quinn repeats. She explains her logic, "I got thirty four thousand for my car, which is a lot of money, but I have to pay for everything from now on. I need to get a job, but unemployment is high right now so I have no idea how long it will take to get a job and how long I'll have to try and survive off of that money. Especially if it's me and the baby trying to live off that money…realistically, I don't think it's going to last as long as I'll probably need it to. It's an eight hundred dollar difference and eight hundred dollars toward rent could probably get me…"

"In Lima, about two months some place average," Mr. Schue supplies. He sighs and offers, "I understand not wanting to spend the extra money and I think that it's smart to be that cautious. But have you considered how much gas costs? You're going to buy half the gas for that car than you would have for a Civic or probably the Corrollas you had in mind. Eventually, it could probably save you more than eight hundred dollars."

That's a valid point, but not one that's necessarily true. Luckily Quinn had printed out the information on the Civic she was looking at and takes it out of her bag and, luckily, she remembered what the information sheet on the Prius said about gas mileage. So she gets out her phone, picks the calculator feature and starts literally doing the math for the price differences in the cars.

While she's doing it, she asks Mr. Schue if he has internet on his phone, which he does, and if he could look up safety ratings for the Prius because she didn't trust that Kyle would be honest when he clearly was trying to make a sale.

"Provided I drive about twenty thousand miles a year and that gas prices stay around $2.66 a gallon like they have been, I'd save $628 a year with the Prius. So by the time I have it for two years I'll likely save more than the eight hundred extra dollars it costs," Quinn figures out.

"And you'll probably likely keep it for at least five or six years, so think of how much money you'd save overall too," Mr. Schue suggests. Quinn still doesn't seem eager to go back and get the car that would cost her more now but save her money in the long run. So he offers, "I know Kyle said he can't lower the price anymore, but we could still try. You said something about crying, right? You haven't done that yet."

That was true as well- a sob story was worth a try. But to try and make sure it worked to get at least a couple hundred dollars more knocked off the price, Quinn decides to have a plan going in and lets Mr. Schue know his role.

Twenty minutes later they're back at the dealer wandering around the Prius. Mr. Schue stands with his back to the dealership, waiting for Kyle to come out. Quinn stands at the side of the car pretending to read the information sheet in the window as she chews her lower lip and has one hand strategically placed on her stomach.

It's only a couple of minutes before Kyle is pouncing on them. He stops next to Will and asks, "So, did she make a decision?"

"Still trying to," Will answers. He sighs, sadly, and whispers confidingly, "She's been having a real hard time lately and this is a big decision for her. Her parents kicked her out when they found out she was pregnant. Luckily they had put her car in her name and she sold it to get some money, but she really can't afford to spend too much of it, considering the baby on the way and how she's going to be doing everything on her own from now on. I mean, I'm trying to help, but I'm just her Spanish teacher and glee club advisor and I'm going through a divorce myself so I don't really have any financial support I can offer. Which is why I'm here to at least support her through decisions like this."

Kyle had to copy her driver's license to let her take the car on a test drive and he'd seen the age that it said. Sixteen. Thinking of that and what he just heard, he asks disbelievingly, "Her parents kicked her out?"

Mr. Schue nods, "Within minutes of finding out about the baby. They only gave her a half hour to pack up her things and get out of their house forever. She's been staying with different friends, bouncing from couch to couch, for the last month and a half since."

Mr. Schue glances at Kyle and sees that the man seems to have gotten the point that they were going for- that Quinn was in a very bad situation, a victim of her parents cruelty, left to fend for herself and a baby when she's still technically a child herself. Proceeding with the plan, Mr. Schue puts his left hand in his pocket, signaling to Quinn to take over.

It's not that hard to cry. She just thinks of the way her father looks at her, the things he said the night he kicked her out, and her eyes are tearing up. She wipes at a few stray ones, as if she's making the effort to look like she's trying to make them go away, to be _un_noticed. And failing to make all of the evidence of her tears disappear, she approaches Kyle and Mr. Schue and says regretfully, "I love the car and I know it's a good deal, but I just can't do it. It's too far over my budget. I can't spend that much extra." She tells Kyle as she tries to muster a smile, "Thank you for your time and all of your help. I really appreciate it."

"You sure?" Mr. Schue checks just like he's supposed to.

Quinn just nods and turns her head as she swipes at her eyes (but not enough to _actually_ cover the act). She turns to walk back towards Mr. Schue's car and he begins to follow.

They only get a few steps before Kyle calls out, "Wait." They stop and try not to look hopeful when they turn around. He offers, "Maybe I can get the price down a bit more for you or at least throw in some free oil changes or something to make it more worth your while." He tells them, "Come on inside and we'll see what we can do to get you this car."

This was the objective so they appear to consider it for a second and hesitantly follow Kyle into the dealership. Behind his back, they exchange pleased smiles at the success of their plan so far.

Kyle talks to a man who appears to be his manager, checks with them about how they would plan on paying for the car (if they'd be making payments etc.), and then goes back to his manager. Eventually he returns and offers $10,400 (out the door- so including taxes and fees), with six vouchers for free oil changes that wouldn't expire and that she could use in Lima, no need to come all the way back to Columbus for it. Quinn pretends to mull it over for a few minutes, then even asks for some privacy to discuss it with Mr. Schue, and finally waves Kyle back and accepts the offer.

Kyle gets right to work on all the paperwork that comes with selling a car. Quinn has to present him the court document that her parents signed declaring their approval of letting her have a car title in her name. All things in order, he puts her name on the Prius's title. She writes him a check, but it's never as simple as that and he has to spend a while on the phone with her bank. It seems like almost everything is in order until he asks, "So we can give your insurance a call now if you'd like, let them know your vehicle has changed. I recommend it- you don't want to be on the road without insurance."

"I don't have insurance," Quinn confesses and hastily adds, "yet." Actually, she doesn't know if she can get insurance at all so she continues, "My last car was insured by my parents, but I can't get on theirs again. I don't know what to do. I tried looking up whether or not I can get insurance, but I never found anything helpful that really said either way."

"Well, some companies don't like insuring sixteen year olds without their parents or a guardian on it, but technically all you need to have insurance in your name is having the title in your name. I suggest you start looking into different companies, see who's okay with providing you insurance, and who's cheaper. The good news is that when you do get insured, a lot of companies, though they have high rates for teenagers, give discounts for hybrid cars," Kyle explains.

Quinn thanks him for the information. She'd been trying to find out about insurance since she got the idea for what she was doing a couple of weeks ago and it seemed like no one and nothing online ever had any useful information about what she could do. And considering how simple it seemed, that was really odd- not to mention terribly frustrating.

In total, it takes nearly three hours of sitting at Kyle's desk before everything is squared away and Quinn is officially the owner of a used Prius. As they head out of the dealership, Mr. Schue is excited to notice the time- it's about dinner time and he'd been hoping they'd be in Columbus long enough to get to visit another one of his favorite and much missed restaurants. He decides to leave his car parked outside the dealership and they climb into Quinn's new purchase. He knows how to get to the restaurant from here, but they enter the address into the navigation just to check it out.

The navigation system accurately gets them to The Big Fat Greek Kuzina. Mr. Schue, not keen on cooking, decides he's going to order some stuff to go so he has leftovers and he encourages Quinn to do the same (it's not exactly cheap though so she doesn't indulge).

Will doesn't exactly know how to get into what he wants to say, so over their dinner salads (after talking about Greek mythology oddly enough) he blurts, "You know, I could put you and your car on my insurance. I'm not your legal guardian, but I'm pretty sure that my insurance will allow it anyway. And I doubt it'd add very much to my bill."

That sounded like he intended to pay for her insurance and, even if she was possibly making an embarrassing leap, Quinn immediately responds, "I couldn't let you pay for my insurance. If I can't get insurance on my own, then I really appreciate the offer and I'll probably take you up on it, but I'd pay you for the cost of my insurance."

Mr. Schue rubs at his chin, not liking that she insisted on taking on the cost all by herself (though realistically he probably wouldn't be able to afford paying for her for forever) and counter proposes, "Well…how about, if you end up being put on my insurance, we agree to discuss how you'll pay then- with the possibility of a payment plan not just you paying in full every month…or actually I get billed quarterly."

"Okay," Quinn agrees and adds gratefully, "thank you." She really appreciates the offer since she's worried that she will need an adult to help her get insurance, but she doesn't want to have to owe Mr. Schue he'd helped enough and she wasn't his responsibility.

The rest of their dinner passes pleasantly. The air between them had finally been cleared earlier and wasn't just being ignored as it had been for weeks now. Things were settled and it was nice. Though, when she thought about it, Quinn found it a little odd to be hanging out with her teacher, but Mr. Schue was a lot more than just a teacher at this point.

When Quinn drops Will back off at his car, he leans over and give her a half-hug (kind of awkwardly, they were in a car after all) and tells her that he really enjoyed the day and to call or just come by if she ever needs anything at all. He also insists on following her or her following him all the way back to town because he wants to make sure she makes it back okay (she's never driven from Columbus before). He ends up following her all the way back to her house and giving a small honk and a wave as he continues on his way home.

When Quinn pulls in the driveway of her parent's house, she notices the curtains move in a nearby window. Though she figured that meant her parents were aware she came home with a new car, they don't cross paths with her as she heads up to her bedroom or come to her door to comment on it.

The first thing she does is call her sister. She couldn't exactly talk or text while buying the car or looking at it- that seemed rude. So she hadn't talked to her sister since before she left this morning. Jessica is excited about the car and requests that Quinn take pictures sometime tomorrow and send them to her. She also catches on to the concern in Quinn's voice when she mentions how much money she has left and promises that she could use it all up by the end of the year and she'd still be fine- Jessica (and Eric) would make sure of it.

It had been a long day and after Quinn gets off the phone with her sister all she really wants to do is go to bed, but she can't help but remember and dwell on how Puck's last message to her yesterday had mentioned that he'd call her today. He had been calling her every day and yet today he hadn't. She supposed though that this was the sort of thing that proved her right in not trusting the things he said. Maybe it was something small, but it still qualified as him not keeping his word despite this new resolve he seemed to have about being a better guy.

Just as Quinn's trying to convince herself that she really believes that Puck not calling was a sign that she was right not to believe in him, Quinn's phone rings and the caller ID flashes "Puck."

"Hello?" she answers.

"Hey, you're back," he responds.

"I'm on a cell phone, I could be anywhere. How did you know I was back?" Quinn asks curiously, not understanding how he could have come to that conclusion just because she answered the phone.

"Uh…" he stalls. He doesn't have a good lie though so he's just going to have to tell her the truth. He prefaces, "Okay, this may sound kind of…stalkery, but earlier today, while we were out shopping, I drove by Mr. Schue's place and his car was gone. Then I drove back a few hours later and it was still gone. Then I just drove by, just to check, and it was back. I didn't want to call if you were still busy or while you were driving- so…yeah." He feels like he should defend his actions more, but he can't think of anything that makes what he did sound any better. (Except possibly admitting that there was something weird about being on the phone with her if she was still with Mr. Schue. He liked talking to her when she was alone. It felt easier, more honest.)

Quinn doesn't know what to make of that. She supposes it made sense. She was glad he didn't call when she was with Mr. Schue- that would have been weird. She's also glad he didn't call while she was driving because she wouldn't have been able to answer as it wasn't safe to drive and use a phone in any capacity and since she found out she was pregnant (and therefore literally carrying precious cargo) she had been an extra cautious driver. Not knowing what else to do, Quinn simply responds accepting what he said, "Okay." And then she adds, "If you had driven by my house instead of Mr. Schue's though you could have seen what kind of car I got."

"You got a car?" Puck responds, "That's great…unless you got something lame and given your criteria I think the chances are pretty good you did."

"I did not," she defends, "I got a 2007 Toyota Prius."

"Eh, that's a tiny bit lame," he declares, "but I guess it's more smart than it is lame so it was probably a good choice."

"It was a good choice," she insists. Still irked by it, she adds, "Though I did have to pay a bit more than I wanted to. But with the money I'll save on gas it'll actually save me money in the long run."

"Sounds good," he agrees. "So, tell me more about it. What color is it?" he asks, just trying to keep the conversation going. Even if the color didn't matter, he preferred drawing out talking to her as long as possible.

Quinn starts out with the color, tells him about all the features it came with, the lack of miles on it and then she finds herself telling him other things about the day. She tells him about the salesman, how she organized a ploy with Mr. Schue to get the price dropped again, the day with Mr. Schue in general. She basically tells him about everything from the day and hears all about his day of shopping with his mom and sister and the massive amount of people in the Black Friday crowds. He didn't really get anything- wanted to save his money. He just defended and schlepped the purchases of his mom and sister. He also proudly mentions how he didn't get in any fights this year- didn't want to risk getting arrested (again)- and he wanted to be better than that (than the past- he implied). And when they both get through their entire day, Quinn realizes that it's already Saturday. She had been exhausted before he called, wanting nothing more than to go to sleep, but somehow that thought didn't cross her mind for the two and a half hours they talked and only actually noticing the time caused her to finally suggest ending the call.

She tells him, "It's late and the last couple of days have been really long. I should get some sleep."

"Yeah, you should," Puck agrees only to realize how that could be taken. He hastily amends, "And I don't mean like you need sleep because you're cranky or something. I just read that it's important for pregnant women to get plenty of sleep."

"I've read that too," Quinn agrees (smiles a little at the fact that he's read something about pregnancy). "I'll talk to you tomorrow. Goodnight," she says, without thinking, as if it was just the natural (usual) thing to say. (And not recalling the fact that though she thought of "tomorrow" as Saturday, Saturday was technically already today.)

Puck's smile stretches his entire face as he responds, "Yeah. Goodnight." (She had never been the one to mention a future time to talk. He took that as a very good sign.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn manages to spend most of her Saturday on the phone.

She starts her day late. Being pregnant had been making her more and more tired and she had been getting less sleep the last couple of days so she attempted to get caught up. Of course that never worked, but it was worth a try and she did feel more rested than she had most of the week.

When she does decide that she's tried to sleep long enough, Quinn calls her sister. It had become a ritual to call Jessica first thing every morning. Today Jessica had some good news. The person Eric had shown their Cincinnati and Dayton stores to a few weeks ago had finally finished mulling over what he wanted to do and made an offer to buy them that morning. They had quickly accepted. The sales wouldn't solve their money problems, but it would definitely lessen their financial burden. It was very good news and Jessica was hoping that their good fortune would continue when she went to the doctors on Monday to find out whether or not her leg would need another surgery.

After talking to Jessica, the next person Quinn talks to is Rachel. She grabs a late breakfast/early lunch and decides to do more reading on pregnancy. She had been eating healthy and avoiding the appropriate foods and activities, but she still felt like she could probably be doing more to have a healthy pregnancy. And it's as she's reading about the benefits of exercising and what types of exercises to do while pregnant that, oddly enough, she remembers she told Rachel she'd call her. She's not sure what to call about, but she did say she'd call and she doesn't want to go back on her word.

Luckily, Rachel sends an email to all the girls in glee club with instructions to practice the song she attached as she expected them to come to a rehearsal Monday during lunch prepared to work on the girls number (she didn't seem to be giving them a choice about participating in said number either). So she calls Rachel and compliments her on choosing "Express Yourself"- Rachel had thought the girls could use its empowering message. They only talk a few minutes (not really friends yet, they don't exactly have anything to talk about), but it's nice and it makes the prospect of talking again without a very good reason seem more normal, easier.

Minutes after she gets off the phone with Rachel, Kurt calls Quinn. He knew her money had come through and he wanted to know if she had gone back to the mall and gotten all the outfits he had suggested. Since they one, totaled to over fifty outfits, and two, she was still managing to make her current wardrobe work and save her money, Quinn tells him that no, she hadn't returned to the mall and wasn't planning to soon. He promises to change her mind on that before telling her all about his time at his grandma's house- which he's on the way back from in Muncie, Indiana (Quinn can hear Burt listening to a football game and swearing occasionally in the background).

Finally off the phone, nearing two in the afternoon, Quinn decides that maybe she should give some thought to their glee assignment. As much as she likes Madonna, Quinn's not sure she really wants to do anything more than participate in the girls number and any group number they may end up doing. They weren't required to do anything and after the last two times she sang a Madonna song, doing it for glee club just seems… out of place.

Thinking about Madonna though, Quinn remembers what she had overheard Puck say to Kelyn. She wonders what he was planning or thinking of doing and realizes that she doesn't have to wonder, she could just ask. Before she loses her nerve or gives it so much thought she talks herself out of it, Quinn calls Puck.

"Hello," he answers cautiously figuring she'd accidentally dialed him (he didn't want to get his hopes up).

"Hi. I was just trying to come up with something for the glee club assignment and when you accidentally called me and I heard the whole Bieber thing, I also heard you mention that you were already working on it. So I was wondering what you're planning on doing for it since I'm kind of stuck for ideas," Quinn quickly nervously rants off- getting her reason for calling out quick so it doesn't seem like she's calling just to be calling.

He smiles (she was calling him!) and responds, "Well…I didn't actually come up with anything. Mr. Schue seemed like he really wanted us to do the whole Madonna thing and since the only guy that seemed into it was Kurt I figured it's going to fall to one of the rest of us guys to put something together. Finn seems especially against it- which I understand now that I've gone through a bunch of her songs- and Mike and Matt never take initiative and I'm pretty sure Artie's preoccupied with Tina. So I figured the task fell to me, but I can't find a song by Madonna that rocks at all. It's all chick music."

Thinking about some of the Madonna songs that came to mind, Quinn realizes that they are quite rooted in the female point of view. Most would be kind of hard to change to make them appropriate for a guy to sing. "It is," she agrees and suggests, "well maybe the guys could get away with just being a part of whatever group number we end up doing."

"Hope so," he responds.

Silence begins to settle- a sign that the conversation seems to be over. Until she continues with, "You guys could do something generic like 'Holiday.' Or you could do 'Erotica' and hope Mr. Schue bans you from ever doing Madonna again."

"I think I'll try that second option," Puck half-jokes in response.

They manage to stay on the phone with each other for an hour (despite the fact that her reason for calling was resolved in the first two minutes of the call).

-o-o-o-

After he hangs up with Quinn, there's promptly a knock on Puck's bedroom door before his mother comes through.

"I see you're finally off the phone," she comments. "You've been spending a lot of time on the phone lately," she's prodding and since he's not volunteering anything she finally asks, "All with Quinn?"

"Yes," he admits knowing what would come now.

"So I was right," she says proudly, "talking helped you like her originally and now just talking can help her find her way back to liking you."

"Well, I think it's helping her be okay with talking to me again, not necessarily liking me," Puck amends (if he gets his hopes too far up he'll just end up they could just get that much more dashed). "But things are looking better," he adds hoping he's right in thinking that.

May stands in his doorway and waits. And waits. And waits. Since he doesn't seem to be getting it, she says, "And since I was the one who suggested calling her every day what do you say?"

Puck rolls his eyes a little but says gratefully, "Thanks 'Ma."

"You're welcome," she responds happily. She heads back out his door only to pop back through a second later and add, "Hanukah's coming up- you can always thank me with gifts too."

Considering how great his mom had been about everything and this newest help she had provided, Puck thinks that he really should put some thought and consideration into some really good Hanukah gift for her this year.

-o-o-o-

Quinn's Sunday is a lot like her Saturday- spent largely on the phone. Except today in between calls she spent her time applying to any place that would let her apply online. She actually found a handful of places in Lima were hiring for seasonal work and she hoped to at least get hired somewhere for a temporary job like that. And applying to jobs was turning out to be much more enjoyable than how she had spent the previous night after she got done talking to Puck- researching different car insurance companies (she was still undecided).

Kurt calls a couple of times to complain about the homework he's trying to get through at the last minute because he had procrastinated on it all break.

Rachel calls because neither Santana or Brittany responded to her email about an all girls number at all. She wanted to know if Quinn had heard from either one of them and since she hadn't Rachel was hoping Quinn would call and make sure they got the email and would be coming to school prepared tomorrow. Rachel didn't want to call herself, she knew that they didn't like her and figured they either wouldn't answer or wouldn't listen. Quinn honestly didn't know if she'd have any better luck talking to either girl about a glee club assignment (Santana didn't like working on things with Rachel and Brittany was easily distracted from any conversation). But Rachel doesn't seem like she'll take no for an answer so Quinn agrees to try and call them.

Quinn starts with Brittany. She'd never been real friends with Brittany in the sense that they share secrets or talk about anything real. But Brittany liked to do stuff- go shopping, or to get a manicure, or just out to eat- and hated being alone for any of it. So Brittany was one the only girl on the whole squad of her supposed "friends" that she had actually spent time with alone outside of school- hanging out sort of like friends. And it didn't hurt that Brittany was naively nice (or a little slow to understand the social structure she was a part of) so she was the best bet to call first and be heard.

"Hello," Brittany answers.

"Hi Brit, it's Quinn," she begins.

"Are you sure? It didn't say Quinn on my caller ID. It was an unknown number so shouldn't this be like an unknown person?" Brittany interrupts, confused.

It takes Quinn a second to figure out how to respond to that so Brittany will understand and this direction they're headed will stop. "I got a new number," she tries, "the one you have in your phone is my old one- you can delete it, my parents canceled the service for it. But this is my new number- you should save it."

It takes a minute, but Brittany finally responds, "Oh. Okay." Letting it go like it was never mentioned, Brittany continues, "It's good you called. You have to come back and be our coach. Coach Sylvester is being awful. She made us have a five hour practice today- and every other day of break so far except Turkey Day."

"That's awful," Quinn agrees, "But I can't do anything about it. There's no way to get rid of Coach Sylvester. Besides, at least you can be sure you'll be National champions because of her- and that you'll get a break from practicing when you win just like we did last year."

"I did like winning," Brittany responds, "and the girl on the trophy looks just like me."

They're pretty far off track so Quinn says, "The reason I was calling though was because Rachel wanted to know if you and Santana got her email about the all girls number she wanted to do this week."

"Yeah we got it. San said the funniest thing- she said Rachel should do 'Like a Virgin.' You know, because she's probably never had sex," Brittany responds with a giggle.

Quinn didn't get how that would be a real joke since she didn't agree with the idea that Rachel was pathetic for not having had sex yet. Her life would certainly be completely different if she hadn't had it yet. She responds politely ignoring the joke and says, "Well Rachel will be relieved to hear you got it. She was nearly having a panic attack since you guys didn't respond to the message- thinking you two wouldn't be prepared for tomorrow."

"Oh we're not prepared," Britt responds lightly, "I don't think I've ever even heard the song."

Crap. "Can you please try to at least listen to it today? And maybe try to remember the chorus too?" Quinn proposes hopefully.

"Yeah, sure," Brittany responds, but it doesn't really sound like she's listening anymore- a thought which is confirmed by the hasty goodbye she follows her agreement with.

Quinn figures that even though she doesn't want to listen to Rachel possibly rant about people not taking glee seriously, she should be honest about what Brittany said. Surprisingly, when she tells Rachel that Brittany and Santana got the email and were going to try to listen to the song today, Rachel thought that was better than she expected. (Quinn thinks that Rachel thought they'd possibly refuse to work with her on anything- maybe she even thought that about all of the other girls in glee.)

Besides talking to Kurt a few times, Rachel twice, and Brittany, Quinn talks to her sister a few times like she usually did. Jessica wanted her to send her something, but she wouldn't say what. She didn't want to not put a return address on it, but she also didn't want their parents knowing that she was sending Quinn anything at all. So she tasks Quinn with finding somewhere she can send it (Kurt's house eventually ends up being the destination as he easily agrees).

Quinn also talks to Puck…twice. First he called her, then she called him. They didn't really talk about anything important. His "excuse" for calling her had been to warn her that whenever she sees his mom, never give her a way to see Mr. Schue because she had been wanting to convince him that the glee club should do _Fiddler on the Roof- _which he was definitely against. Her "excuse" for calling him was that she had been reading about Hanukah again and that led her to read about what being kosher was and, just for future reference, she wanted to know if his family kept kosher (always on holidays and his mom did like to make the effort most of the time- though not so much for him and Kelyn). From those starting topics, both times they ended up talking about random things and both times Quinn hung up smiling.

Tomorrow she would see Puck for the first time in over a week. They had talked more in the last week than they had in probably the last month. And Quinn knew that she needed to stop ignoring what was happening. She had made decisions and she had had good reasons for her decisions. But she knew that some of the things she had made those decisions based on had changed and she needed to take that into consideration accordingly.

She never wanted to do this alone. Originally, she had done something horrible to ensure she wouldn't be alone in all of this (her lies to Finn). But she didn't want to make the same mistakes either.

Puck had been different lately. (Or the same as he had been back when all of this really started.) He wanted to be involved in the pregnancy, with the baby, and he had been consistently expressing that idea for about three weeks now. (Though, he had expressed a desire to be involved for over a month before and she still managed to miss his real intent and get her heart broken again.) And when she thought about the future, of all the things to come (doctor's appointments, seriously looking into adoption, giving birth), she was terrified of having to go through any of it alone. Maybe it was time she took a chance.

(Definitely not romantically though. She's pregnant and that comes before everything else. After everything though, given everything, her love life came dead last in her life. And she hadn't been finding it that difficult to force all thoughts of it out of her head

…except sometimes lately when she found herself on the phone and smiling.)

-o-o-o-

Despite the many people who would ignore her and the others that would snicker as she passed them in the halls, Quinn was looking forward to returning to school Monday morning. Without putting any effort into it she managed not to cross paths with her parents at all, all weekend. Unless one counted the fact that some of her conversations with her sister were video calls through Skype, Quinn hadn't seen another person since Friday. (When thoughts like that crept up, thoughts that made her feel lonely and small and insignificant, she tried to remind herself that she had plenty of people to talk to even if she hadn't actually seen any of them and that was a comfort she didn't used to have.)

Kurt meets Quinn in the parking lot wanting to get a look at her new car. He makes a quip about her car making up for the damage his is doing to the environment and then he mentions that he really likes the color of it on her, which she didn't completely follow but took as a compliment anyway.

She passes by Rachel on her way to her first class and Rachel offers a friendly, yet short, "Hi Quinn," before firmly reminding, "we have practice in the auditorium during lunch. Don't be late. We need to get through at least five rehearsals of the song according to my schedule and if anyone's late we're not going to be able to do that." It was a pretty typical Rachel encounter.

Thanks to the rehearsal during lunch though, Quinn misses out on how Puck decided to sit with Artie and Kurt (who she had been sitting with along with Tina and Mercedes the last couple of weeks). He hadn't crossed paths with her all day so he figured he'd get to see her there- completely forgetting that she had told him about Rachel's plan for the girls. He would have passed her in the hall between third and forth period- he usually did- but today his third period teacher asked him to stay after class (not because he was in trouble, to offer some extra credit work he had asked about a while ago) and he missed her. He tries casually hanging out around her locker towards the end of lunch…until he realizes that he doesn't know what to say to her for a reason for having sought her out (and it still feels like he would need a reason to talk to her). So he leaves before she shows up.

Then, after sixth period, he's come up with something to ask her so he detours to her locker and, lucky enough, she's there. "Hey," he greets and gets to the point, "Mr. Schue called a glee meeting for after school today, right?" (She doesn't have to know that she's the fifth person from glee he's seen today who he could have asked and that he absolutely didn't need this clarification.)

Quinn's thrown a bit by his sudden appearance. (She's nervous- she has something she needs to talk to him about today and she's not sure how to…start.) "Yeah," she answers and she doesn't know what else to say.

"Okay," he responds and adds with a smirk, "and then after that you're going to show my your new, nerdy car."

"It's not nerdy," she defends (smiling). She adds, having hesitated just a tiny bit, "And you will see for yourself that it isn't after glee club."

The bell rings and saves both of them from having to come up with something else to say that probably wouldn't fit.

He tells her he'll see her later and walks away really glad that he can use phrases like that with her now.

She walks away now knowing when she'd have to tell him what she had decided. She didn't want to start re-thinking what she planned, it was hard enough to get to in the first place. So, as her nerves about talking to him grew (because she had no idea how she was going to talk to him about it, what exactly she was going to say, and feared it would be awkward), she tried to remind herself that she needed to take this chance.

Unfortunately before she makes it to glee club, Quinn has an encounter with Coach Sylvester. It's the first since Quinn sub-coached for her since Coach Sylvester didn't show up for the last week of school before their week off as she said she would (the team ended up getting that week off too, Figgins couldn't get another sub/Quinn approved for another week that they were technically already paying Sue for). According to Brittany though, Coach Sylvester had come back the first day of their time off and had been making the team practice for five hours a day.

It happens in the hallway. Coach Sylvester passes by her locker quipping, "Jamie Lynn Spears- you did a horrible job of preparing my Cheerios for Nationals in my absence, which is proof that it's a good thing you're not their captain anymore."

Coach Sylvester is already departing before she finishes what she's come to criticize, but Quinn has been fed up with people treating her horribly and not doing anything about it. If she were still popular and playing the role and being her parents' daughter, she would never stand for this type of treatment. And, she's been thinking, that maybe the girl that doesn't let people walk all over her is the girl she really is because she finds herself easily retorting to Sue's retreating figure, "Without me Stacy's timing would still be a half a second off." Sue stops and glances back at her as she continues, "And since you never noticed that about her, then it doesn't seem like you know which two other people are consistently off."

Sue strides back over to her, scoffs as she says, "No one's timing is off. I would have noticed."

"If you say so," Quinn responds with a conniving smile.

"I have a house full of trophies proving that I always make my team their best- no one has flaws I don't notice and force them to fix," Sue continues.

"Okay," Quinn mock concedes, still smiling like she knows something that Sue doesn't (because she does). In an effort to have the upper hand, Quinn decides to end their interaction. "I have to hurry to glee club," she tells Coach Sylvester. She adds, faking sweetness well, "Good luck with those timing problems you're not having."

Glee club goes as expected. Mr. Schue asks how everyone enjoyed/spent their week off. Then he asks how their Madonna assignments are coming along. Kurt asks to do a video project for it with Mercedes, which they already started and that gets approved. Rachel spends a while detailing why she made her song choice and declaring that they would present their song on Thursday (since they couldn't go tomorrow as today's meeting was replacing Tuesday's this week- Mr. Schue needing to meet with his lawyer instead). Finn repeats his objection to doing Madonna, though this time the other boys join in likewise maintaining that she wasn't someone guys could do. Mr. Schue is frustrated by this (though doesn't really seem to have an argument against the opinion) and ends up simply asking the boys to try harder.

With glee club over, the moment Quinn had been nervous about is here…only it isn't. She expects that Puck will hang back in the choir room and they'll go out to see her car. Only it apparently got around to everyone that she got a new car and pretty much all of them are hanging around to see it. It starts with Artie saying to her, "Let's see this new ride of yours," and then everyone chimes their agreement and that's how she ends up walking with everyone to the parking lot. Though not all of them were interested in the car- Santana and Brittany were only headed in the same direction as the rest of them so they could get to Santana's car and the same was true for Finn.

Thankfully, since Kurt has already seen the car, he easily pulls Mercedes away with him. Then Rachel gets a text and mysteriously heads off with barely a goodbye. Mike and Matt have plans with other friends to get to so they don't hang around too long. And eventually it occurs to Tina and Artie that they could be spending this time while waiting for Artie's mom to show up alone somewhere.

While everyone is still there though, Puck having been mixed in with the crowd and not saying anything about the car like everyone else, he discretely passes by Quinn and whispers, "Still seems like a geeky car."

Once Artie and Tina have headed off for some alone time, Puck lets himself into the passenger seat as he says, "Let's try out that intelligent park thing you said it came with. I don't see how something like that could possibly work."

Quinn gets in the drivers seat, starts the car, but she doesn't pull out of the parking space so she can demonstrate what Puck had asked her to. She paused with her hand on the turned keys, pulls it back quickly. Her hands fretting together in her lap, she spontaneously decides to dive in to what she decided she should do. She glances over at him and asks quickly, "Are you busy after school tomorrow?"

He wasn't expecting that. He thought she'd show him some of the features of the car and he'd find a fun way to tease her about everything (it felt like they could always use something not-serious these days). But he manages to respond quickly despite his surprise, "No. I don't have anything going on."

"Do you think, maybe, you'd want to go to my doctor's appointment with me?" she stumbles asking, eyes holding his.

"Yeah, absolutely," he responds instantly.

She didn't want him to think that this was anything more than it was (she wasn't sure she wanted him to think it was anything less though either). So she explains away, glancing down at the center consul between them, "Good. I just…if you want to be involved, you should get to be for as long as you want."

"I'm not going to stop wanting to be involved," he swears sincerely.

The conviction in her voice makes her glance up at him and he's staring back at her. She doesn't remember the car feeling this narrow. She recognizes this as the path she didn't want to go down though and glances away, just for a second, before starting over, "I don't think what I said before was fair- when I told you I couldn't go through everything with you. I do still think that when we even try to talk about us we just make things worse. I always say things I regret-"

"Me too," he interjects regretfully.

"But…dealing with the pregnancy and everything that's come with it has been easier since the truth came out-mostly. And I realized that we've never tried to be in this together without…us, and Finn, and a bunch of other stuff stacked on top of it. You want to be involved and she's yours too so I think we should at least attempt to go through this together," she finishes explaining, feeling terrified about her decision, worried that it could turn out to be another mistake.

That wasn't exactly what he was hoping for. He wanted to be with her. He was tired of not being with her. Though he had only recently realized how long he had wanted to be with her, but still, it was a damn long time to wait. But, unfortunately, he couldn't deny that she had a point. He didn't want to end up losing her as much as he had after every time what they had semi-started fell apart. He didn't want to be in that place, especially now that being in that place would mean probably losing out on being involved in whatever's going to happen with his baby. Maybe they were better off putting the issue of their relationship on the back burner for now. (And maybe by spending time being there for her and the baby, showing that he could be the responsible guy they need him to be, showing that he'd really like to have them both, would make both of them ready to try again and not screw it up this time.) "Yeah, okay. I can do that," he responds. He adds on honestly, "I'll do anything you want."

This was another one of those moments where things could get complicated. Quinn finds herself ignoring the rapidness of her heartbeat, glancing down away from him again quickly, and biting her lip just a bit to try and not smile. To get out of this dangerous place, she asks, "Does that include not making fun of my car anymore?"

He pretends to consider it, takes a look around the car, and declares, "Nope. Sorry. That's the one thing I can't do for you."

She rolls her eyes as she smiles, glad to be talking to him in a way that actually felt normal.

She demonstrates the intelligent park feature for him. Or attempts to at least, she had yet to try it out and it wasn't exactly what she thought it would be. As she does so she asks him what time his mom gets off work- she wants to call her tonight and let her know that she's accepting her invitation to spend Hanukah with them.

After he's ranted about how a machine couldn't possibly be better at parking than a person, she parks next to his truck to let him out. Before he gets out though, she suggests, "If I'm going to be coming over next week for Hanukah, maybe we should tell Kelyn this week then."

"Probably," he agrees.

"How about tomorrow after the doctor's appointment? We could just get it over with then," she proposes, wanting to get it done and over with so she can stop worrying about how it will go.

"Uh," he considers, "well, I know my mom wanted us to tell her, but I kind of still think it'd be better if my mom is there and she has AA on Tuesday nights. She doesn't have anything on Wednesday's though. I can talk to her about doing it then if Wednesday's cool with you."

"Yeah, that's fine," she agrees and her attention is quickly drawn to her phone chirping.

When she doesn't immediately reach for her phone (she had this thing about being on the phone when she was with anyone- thought it was rude), he suggests, "You should check out who that text was from. Your sister was going to the doctor to find out about her leg today, right? It could be from her."

She hesitates because they were talking and it felt normal and she hated to interrupt that by checking her phone. But since he told her to and her sister did say she would let her know how the appointment went as soon as she was out of it (or still in it and knew anything new) Quinn pulls out her phone and checks it. "It is from my sister," she says and continues reading, a frown forming, "she needs another surgery. It's going to be over another month before she gets into a walking cast now and can actually move around decently." She puts her phone down and realizes that that means that she probably won't be seeing her sister any time soon. She had hoped that if Jessica's leg had been healing properly and she got the walking cast, she'd be able to stand the long drive and come out to see her. But now she supposes that that's not going to happen. It also rules out the possibility of seeing Jessica for Christmas as she'll be fairly immobile so her in-laws, who live in the same town as Jessica and Eric, will probably just come over to make things easy on her. Which would be nice for Jessica and Eric, but it means her holidays will probably be spent alone.

"I'm sorry," Puck offers.

"It's okay," she says, trying to convince herself that this wasn't such unfortunate news. Forcing herself to be optimistic (because these days, there wasn't a lot she could be optimistic about and she needed to take advantage of the things she could be), she thinks, "We have winter break coming up and spending money on gas to get to Reading wouldn't cost me that much in this car, maybe I could just go see her." It wasn't like she had a job or other family to stick around for, she really could take the rest of the time after Hanukah until they went back to school and go see her sister.

"Sounds like a good idea," he responds, though he doesn't like the idea of her leaving (what if she didn't want to come back?). He wanted to linger, but he knew he probably shouldn't. He offers, "Well, I should get going so you can go home and video chat with your sister, sounds like she probably needs you right now."

"Yeah," she replies because this is what should happen. They should head their separate ways, back to the things they actually needed to do today rather than staying in this place. "I'll see you tomorrow," she says smiling, actually pretty pleased about the idea.

"Yeah, see you tomorrow," he returns, smiling too, but he knows he's going to spend the next several hours trying to come up with a reason to call her- she doesn't need to know that though.

(Here's something you should know: This may not be the place either one of them thought they would be. But it's a good place all the same. A place with a lot of potential.)

* * *

**A/N: I hope you enjoyed the chapter!**

**Next chapter title:** Undecided, again. Since I only just decided to split what comes next from the Hanukah bit, I have to select a different title and I'm torn between two things at the moment. This is not definitely the title, but I am strongly leaning towards: _And deep inside, I'm not as tough as I seem_ from "Under My Skin" by Rachel Yamagata.

On top of the holiday, I have jury duty next week so I'm sorry to say that I have no idea when you can expect an update. I am hoping it won't take too long though.

**Thank you for reading and have a wonderful week! And remember to REVIEW!**


	15. Chapter 13

**A/N: Thank you to the many fantastic people that reviewed! ** I really appreciate how many of you took the time to review and all of your kind words. And a special thank you to all of the anonymous reviewers who I never get to message individually to express my gratitude:D

**I'm sorry for how long it's taken me to post this chapter.** Though this chapter was only two pages away from being complete when the last was posted I've been finding very little time to write lately. I'm not nearly as far into the next chapter as I'd like to be, but all of you have been so wonderful so I didn't want to make you wait any longer. Hopefully I'll find tons of time to write in the next few days and the next chapter, which will cover Hanukah, will be up within a couple of weeks. I'm also hoping that the chapter that follows it, which covers Christmas and (if it doesn't get too long) New Years will be up somewhere in between those two events. Basically- I'm shooting for two more chapters by the end of the month despite the chaos the holidays always induces on life. It's not realistic of me, I know, but I want to strive for it anyway and hopefully accomplish it.

Side-note: I realized recently that those of you reading this who have been reading my P/Q work for a while may be wondering if I'll be doing any Quick stories on this second season. The answer: It's really not looking likely that I will. I'm sure other die-hard Quick shippers have thought up Quick moments using canon despite the direction the season has taken and I certainly have, but I'm just not finding the show very inspiring, very motivating. It would be so much work (and still probably wouldn't turn out very good) just to create a single Quick moment out of this season and according to rumor things are going to continue to go that way. Obviously by the massiveness of this story I enjoy a challenge, just not the one the show has been presenting. For now at least- I have been known to frequently change my mind.

Okay, I think that's all I have this time. For those of you who are familiar with _Popular_ (Ryan Murphy's first show), let's pray that he does _Glee_'s Christmas episode far better than he did theirs. In one of _Popular_'s Christmas episodes he made the claim that all promiscuous high school girls become prostitutes later in life. Nice holiday sentiment, isn't it?

Hope you enjoy the chapter!

* * *

**Cheated Hearts

* * *

**

_XIII. And deep inside, I'm not as tough as I seem_

(Here's something you should know: She thought things were as difficult as they could possibly get, but everything is about to get harder. He thought that in working to become the man he needs to be he'd be prepared for everything to come, but he's about to find out he still has trials ahead of him.)

Quinn spends most of the rest of her Monday talking to her sister.

Jessica is clearly trying to treat the news of another surgery like it isn't bad news. She makes jokes about how if she had married someone who wasn't as clumsy as she was then she wouldn't end up with her leg slammed into things every time he tried to get her somewhere by carrying her. She declares that they might as well invest in a wheel chair now and maybe she could even get a decorative one…or decorate one if that's not an option, whatever. She points out how having her leg broken has gotten her out of cooking dinner every night (or trying to, more accurately). But it's clear that the whole situation is really getting to her. (She specifically stays away from the topic of how much higher her doctor's bills will be now and how much that sucked since the sale of a couple of stores was just starting to alleviate some of their financial problems.)

After talking to Jessica for a long time, Quinn has to make another call. She wanted to let May know that she was going to accept her invitation to Hanukah. So once the time comes around that Puck had recommended for calling his mom- after she cooked and they ate dinner- Quinn gives her a call.

"Hello?" May answers.

"Hi May, this is Quinn-"

"Quinn!" May greets cutting in, "I'm so glad to hear you're coming over for Hanukah. I was going to turn off my cell, but Noah told me not to and it didn't take much to get him to tell me why."

"Oh," Quinn responds, a little thrown by the change. She recovers getting to some of the other things she meant to say after accepting the invitation, "I'm glad to be joining you for your Hanukah celebrations. Thank you again for the invitation."

"No thanks necessary. You're family now, you belong here," May assured. She continues on because Noah had had quite a lot to tell her, "And Noah mentioned how you wanted to tell Kelyn soon. I've decided you two should do it tomorrow after you go to your doctor's appointment. I won't be here, which Noah isn't happy about, but just like I told Noah, you two are going to have a lot of difficult things to deal with soon and doing this on your own will be good practice for all the stuff to come. Okay?"

"Uh," is all Quinn gracelessly has time to stumble in reply before May is talking again.

"I'm going to put Noah on now so you two can prepare for tomorrow. It's nice hearing from you though Quinn. I'll see you tomorrow. After you tell Kelyn you'll stay for dinner," May declares and offers a goodnight before handing the phone off to her son.

Quinn barely gets a goodnight in before she hears a few beats of silence before, "Quinn's on the phone. I told her about tomorrow," and then some rustling.

"Hey," Puck greets. On the one hand he was glad he didn't have to make up a reason to talk to her- especially since his excuses seemed to be getting lamer and lamer. On the other hand though, he really wished his mom would help them out with telling Kelyn. He had no idea how she would take the news and that terrified him. "So…what do you think we should do tomorrow?" he asks, not having any idea himself.

So far Quinn's only encountered one way of telling someone she's pregnant- just coming right out with it. "I guess we should just tell her and then have some kind of…explanation ready."

"Okay," Puck accepts, not knowing what else they could do.

"And we're going to have to make sure she understands that she may never meet the baby, that there's a really good chance she'd be better off with other people," Quinn adds on, trying to make sure she covers all the bases, so to speak. She doesn't want Kelyn to get attached to the idea of a niece or a baby since giving the baby to two responsible adults who could better take care of her still makes a lot of sense.

He hated hearing that. He knew she was right about it possibly being what was best for everyone, but it definitely wasn't what he wanted. Still, he knows that just in case it happens, he's got to warn his sister now so she doesn't get excited about the prospect (if she did at all- he had no idea if she'd like the idea of a baby). "Okay," he agrees. This isn't a topic he wants to dwell on so he moves on asking, "What are we going to tell her about us? How are we going to explain the fact that the baby is mine and yours?"

Honestly, Quinn was kind of hoping that Kelyn would just make assumptions and they wouldn't have to explain at all. She seemed like a smart kid, maybe she could just figure they had a fling. She already seemed to know her brother did that a lot, maybe how she ended up with him wouldn't be an issue. But she knew they couldn't rule out questions about that either.

Before Quinn can respond or think of anything, Puck adds on, "She knew you were going out with Finn too. He said something a couple of times. So that's probably going to make explaining harder."

"Yeah, that does make it harder," Quinn agrees. She exhales and supposes, "I guess we'll just have to think about it and come up with something by tomorrow because right now I have no idea how to explain it to a ten year old without saying things she shouldn't hear."

"Yeah, okay," Puck accepts. He doesn't have any ideas at the moment so they might as well put it off. (Though, he doesn't like that this means an end to the call since they no longer technically have anything to talk about.)

"I have a bunch of homework I need to get back to so I'll see you tomorrow," Quinn says because talking to her sister had taken up a lot of time and she was behind. (Though she wished she didn't have something to get to because then maybe they could find a reason to keep talking. But she wasn't going to admit that to herself.)

"Me too," Puck agrees despite the fact that he only has homework for one class left. "Goodnight," he says.

"Goodnight," she responds and hesitates hanging up for a second she'll never acknowledge as having existed.

She immerses herself in her homework so she doesn't have to think about tomorrow and all the things that could change.

-o-o-o-

Quinn spends most of the day Tuesday trying not to think about her approaching doctor's appointment. On top of her usual fears of a doctor telling her something was wrong with the baby (or that _she _had done something to make something wrong with the baby), Quinn was nervous about being at the appointment with Puck. She still felt it was a good decision- it made logical sense for him to come if he was going to be involved with his child, which he had every right to be. But she had been intimate with him in a way she hadn't ever been with anyone else and going to an appointment and seeing their daughter together felt like a whole new, deeper level of intimacy. And her love life was supposed to be on hold because she needed it to be right now, but the impending appointment, the idea of what it could feel like, made her worry that she wasn't as in control of her love life (of her life) as she wanted to be.

Luckily during their morning break Rachel offers Quinn a decent distraction from worries- if not a perplexing distraction.

"I need to talk to you," Rachel says, suddenly popping up behind Quinn as she heads for her locker.

Quinn's confused by this because it's not a very typical thing for Rachel to say in her experience. Since when does Rachel ask (or semi-imply asking) someone to talk to them? "Okay," she responds.

"No not here," Rachel declares, looking around suspiciously.

"Why not?" Quinn questions because she has no idea what's going on and she'd like to. She wanted to like Rachel, become friends with her, and not be forced to come to the conclusion that the girl was insane.

They reach Quinn's locker and Rachel glances around them again, making sure no one is too close, before she whispers, "I have something…of a personal nature I need to talk about with someone who may have some experience with the general topic. I don't feel comfortable talking about it at school though, too many people could overhear."

That sounded kind of serious. As much as Quinn wants to be a nicer person now that she doesn't have to be someone who treats people badly, her first thought is that she doesn't think she can take on Rachel's problems on top of her own. She offers, "Whatever you want to talk about, I don't think it sounds like I'd be the best person for it."

"You're the only one," Rachel interjects. Then she seems to realize what she confessed and keeps her eyes downward (embarrassed) as she explains, "I can't talk to my dads. As great as they are, they wouldn't be able to talk to me about this. And I don't exactly have…friends. I considered taking the issue to all the girls in glee, but on second thought I'd rather not tell so many people if I don't have to. And since we have a truce now I thought maybe…"

Quinn had no idea if she could possibly help Rachel with whatever she needed at all, but she knew she had to try. (She knew what it was like not to have anyone and she admired that Rachel was trying to change that about her life when Quinn had spent so long simply suffering with it.) "Okay," she agrees, "do you want to go somewhere at lunch and talk?"

"No we can't skip rehearsal," Rachel answers. "How about after school?" she proposes.

"I have a doctor's appointment and then Puck and I are telling his sister about the baby finally," Quinn says, having to turn down the suggestion.

"Oh, good luck," Rachel wishes before quickly returning to the point offering, "Tomorrow after school?"

"Sure," Quinn agrees.

"Thank you," Rachel responds gratefully and smiling.

"You're welcome," Quinn returns politely.

They part ways with Rachel feeling slightly better since she now knew she'd have someone to talk to and Quinn feeling like she may have taken on more than she can handle, but optimistic that the friendship formed would be worth it.

-o-o-o-

Puck and Quinn meet in the parking lot after school. They had agreed that they would only to realize once they were there that since Quinn thought they'd have glee club today as they usually did on Tuesdays she made the appointment for later in the afternoon so the appointment wouldn't disrupt going to glee club (the only high point for her in any day most of the time lately). They decide to go their separate ways and have Puck pick Quinn up for the doctor's appointment since it was pointless to take two cars when they had all the same places to go for the rest of the day. (Both of their nerves made them miss the obvious problem of the time and came through in their short interaction in the parking lot where they decided what they would do.)

Once Quinn gets home she tries to do some homework knowing that she may not get much of a chance to do much until late tonight. She doesn't accomplish a lot though, instead thinking about where she should be when Puck comes to get her. She's met everyone else who's come to get her outside because she doesn't want her parents meeting anyone and if they're out of her life then they don't need to have any idea who she's with anyway. But Puck is different. He's the father of the baby whose existence made her parents disown her. Shouldn't they meet him or at least see him just once even if they want no part in everything?

By the time an hour has passed and the time to leave is upon her, Quinn has decided to wait on the curb for Puck. She eventually figured (or at least briefly settled on thinking) that it was just her wishing her parents cared that had her considering having him actually come up to the house. They didn't care though and she needed to continue to make sure she accepted that because it wasn't going to change.

Puck gets to her house a couple of minutes early (surprisingly) and he tries to make small talk on the way to the doctor's office as if to try and come across like he isn't nervous and kind of scared. He asks trying to sound nonchalant about it, "So is the baby going to look like a baby this time or more black and gray mess?"

The question was actually a decent distraction from the urge to tap her fingers on the seat anxiously. Quinn thinks about what she's read and responds easily, "From what I've read we should be able to see a head clearly, which the rest of the body may be out of proportion with right now."

"Cool," he comments, "do we get a picture like right away? And do they do copies or just give you one cause I'd like to have one if that's alright with you?"

"I've had two ultra sounds at two different places. The second didn't even offer a picture and the first gave each…person present a DVD and gave me a picture. So I think different doctor's offices do things differently. If they only give us one picture though we'll go get it copied so you can have one and I was thinking maybe your mom would want one too since she's been so great about everything. Plus, I figured maybe that third one would help in telling Kelyn- like a visual aid or something," Quinn rambles, nerves showing just a bit in her explanation of some of the things swirling around in her head.

"That sounds like a good plan," Puck comments even though he has no idea if a picture would really make explaining things to Kelyn any easier (he didn't think anything would make it any easier). He's out of small talk questions about what they're doing. He thought it may make his stomach feel like it wasn't in his throat if they talked about what they're doing, like it was completely normal, routine even. He wasn't so sure it really helped except for having allowed him to get them here in one piece. He pulls into the parking lot and parks his truck as he prays to a God he's never much believed in for everything to be okay and to be the man he needs to be today.

-o-o-o-

As a new patient Quinn gets to be distracted from the waiting room around her for the first fifteen minutes she sits in it as she fills out the usual new patient forms.

Puck spends the first fifteen minutes trying to be interested in the only magazine that was near the seats they took. But it was a_ Woman's Day_ magazine so it only really distracts him for about a minute.

Once Quinn has given her filled out forms back to the receptionist and Puck has given up on the magazine doing anything for him, they still have quite a wait ahead of them as the receptionist warned when they first got there that the doctor had been called to an emergency this morning and was running behind.

For the rest of the wait they have nothing to do but sit, worry, and notice.

There are three women with appointments ahead of them, one who came after (and was apparently the last appointment of the day from what they overheard). Two of the women have a man sitting beside them. The other two women are alone, but both are wearing wedding rings. Their ages seem to range from late twenties to early forties. The two who are alone are the older ones, probably alone because this wasn't their first child and therefore nothing for a husband to miss work for or to hire a babysitter to take care of the other kids for.

The women there capture Quinn's attention. One that is there and alone and looks to be the oldest is constantly on the phone. Sometimes it sounds like work and as soon as she seems to hang up with those calls she gets calls that sound like they're from home. She seems stressed. The other one that's alone is really far along- looks like she's ready to give birth any second now- and keeps her head buried in a baby name book periodically sticking post-its in it- she seems kind of frustrated. One of the women who was there with what appeared to be a boyfriend since she wasn't wearing a ring, wasn't very far along, probably the same as Quinn. She constantly had a hand on her stomach and kept whispering with her boyfriend and smiling. The other couple, who were married according to the rings they wore, were similar. They were younger, probably her sister's age, and they looked ecstatic as they read a parenting magazine together. Quinn doesn't think she feels like any of them. She wishes she could, but given her situation she fears she'll never get to be any of them- not now, not ever.

Puck notices the other guys there the most. The guys remind him of Mr. Schue when he thought he was going to be a father. And that thought leads him to wondering if they were here with the right women. Mr. Schue was happy about having a baby even if it was with a woman who seemed psycho. Maybe these people were just settling to. Maybe how happy they seemed right now was just an illusion. Five years from now, one year from now, two months from now, they could both have realized that they were here with the wrong person. Puck knew though, he wasn't here with the wrong person. Maybe the wrong everything else (situation, time, etc.), but definitely not with the wrong person.

Thinking of that, he glances over at the right person. She's worrying her lip, has her head bowed (something he's been thinking she does out of shame). She seems scared and sad. He doesn't know how to fix that, how to fix anything, so as usual he does the first thing he thinks of. He reaches over and takes her hand in his, threads their fingers together and hopes it makes her feel better like it makes him feel better.

She's not surprised that she finds holding his hand comforting. She hopes it can remain as simple as that though. She's not sure she could handle them being complicated again. She has enough stresses.

(He holds her hand and she doesn't let go- not for the entire forty minutes more that they wait until the nurse finally calls Quinn's name.)

-o-o-o-

Puck feels really out of place in the exam room. There are pictures everywhere that remind him of biology class, which he didn't like, and there were tools out to deal with…lady stuff. Quite frankly, the whole room made him feel really anxious and he didn't like it.

But if it made him feel like that he knew he probably couldn't imagine how it made Quinn feel to be going through stuff like this.

Quinn was extremely uncomfortable being here with Puck now. Not only was she just weighed in front of him (and the nurse had to go and say what she weighed out loud), but now she was just told to get completely undressed and put on a gown and get on the table. There is a curtain to change behind, but the idea of getting undressed in a room he's in after everything between them is extremely awkward.

She tries not to make a big deal out of it. She takes the gown and pulls the curtain around (trying to make sure the whole area is completely concealed by it before she even considers unbuttoning even one button on her shirt). But she's still uncomfortable so she asks, "Can you turn around and face the door?"

"I can't see through the curtain," Puck points out in return.

"Can you just do it?" she asks exasperatedly.

"Fine," he concedes, "I'm turning around." He knows she probably couldn't tell if he actually did it unless she peaked around the side of the curtain, but he does as she asked anyway.

(And is it completely wrong that he's kind of getting turned on since she's getting undressed feet away from him? Given all of the diagrams of the female reproductive system around him, he figures that it probably is kind of inappropriate that her changing is having this effect on him here. This is so not the place to be thinking of her like that. Not that he ever really isn't thinking about her like that, but still, this place is especially wrong for those types of thoughts.)

He hears the curtain opening and starts to turn around until she says, "Stay facing that way until I'm on the table." A second later, after the sound of rustling paper, she says, "Okay, you don't have to stay there anymore." He turns around, but as soon as he starts to take a step in her direction she warns, "Don't come behind the table please. The gown doesn't exactly close all the way."

Before Puck can agree the door opens and a woman in white coat comes through.

"Hi! I'm Dr. Massey," she greets enthusiastically with a big smile. She stops next to the table Quinn is perched on and offers her hand. Before Quinn can introduce herself as she takes the woman's hand, the doctor continues, "Quinn it's a pleasure to meet you. I'm happy to have you for a patient. We will take very good care of you here, I promise."

"It's a pleasure to meet you too," Quinn responds a little unsure of what exactly to say. She supposes the woman liked her patients to trust her, which was probably a good change from the first doctor she went to who didn't seem to care at all.

She asks Quinn, glancing to Puck, "And you've brought a friend or the father with you today?"

"The father," Quinn answers.

Dr. Massey smiles as she walks over as she says, "I've learned that it's best to ask. Saves me from making an ass out of myself. Well, sometimes." She offers her hand and greets, "It's a pleasure to meet you too…." she trails off waiting for him to supply his name.

"Puck," he fills in.

"Puck," she finishes with a smile. She says enthusiastically, "Well, let's get started, shall we?" She doesn't wait for them to answer as she heads over to the sink and turns on the water. "I'm so sorry for the delay today. Things aren't usually like that around here," apologizes as she dries her hands. She slips on some gloves and tells Quinn, "Okay, scooch down to the end of the table, put your legs in the stirrups, and lean back."

Quinn assumed the doctor would put Puck out in the hall for this part of the appointment. The last doctor had left Finn in the waiting room for this part. She glances at the doctor and Puck, starting to panic a bit, and begins, "Uh-"

"Oh," the doctor realizes as she unfolds a paper blanket. She glances between the two, still smiling as she says, "Gottcha. Okay, Quinn how about Puck steps out into the hall for a minute while we have your physical exam?"

"Okay," Quinn responds gratefully.

Puck isn't so sure though. He had no idea what the "physical exam" meant, but he didn't want to leave her to go through any part of the appointment alone. He checks, "Are you sure? Cause if there's something you don't want me to see I could just stay up by your head with my eyes closed."

"I'll be fine," she assures.

Well, if she'd rather not have him in there he figures he should just go. "Okay," he accepts and heads out the door.

The exam is fairly quick and Dr. Massey talks through most of it. She got started by commenting on how sweet it was for Puck to offer to stay, if not misguided in her experience because most men got squeamish in these types of situations. She then seems to realize how much she's talking about herself and shifts to asking Quinn questions- nothing about the baby or the pregnancy for the moment, just general questions about things until the exam is over and they talk briefly about how she's been feeling pregnancy-wise. All the talking kind of puts Quinn at ease for the moment, which she supposes was probably the doctor's objective.

After less than fifteen minutes of waiting, Dr. Massey is opening the door and letting Puck back in as she tells him happily, "Everything is fine. Quinn has been taking great care of herself and the baby and they're both perfectly healthy. Go ahead and pull up a chair along Quinn's right side, the ultrasound machine should have been moved in here by a nurse but it still must be in the room next door. I'll go get it, be back in a jiff."

By the time Puck drags a chair over to what he has to pause and make sure is Quinn's right side since the doctor told him to be on that side (why, he had no idea), the doctor is back rolling in what had to be the ultrasound equipment (to Quinn's left side, which made the whole 'be on her right side' make sense).

Puck's not sure what he should be doing, if anything. He almost starts jiggling his leg, but catches himself before he lets that nervous habit show. He can feel himself getting more and more anxious as he watches the doctor set the machine up. Then the woman pulls Quinn's gown up, at the same time making the blanket cover her to be decent, and Puck's attention was drawn to just that spot. She doesn't look very pregnant, but he remembers their one night vividly and he notices the small difference, the difference that is their _daughter_. He suddenly feels like he can't swallow and he's sure he's not breathing.

As the moment she sees her daughter again approaches, Quinn is getting more and more nervous. The baby keeps becoming more and more real and she knows that in the end that will only make what she'll likely have to do more difficult. As the doctor has finished prepping, put the gel on her stomach and all, and the moment she'll put the wand on her stomach and start looking for the baby is upon her, Quinn acts unconsciously and reaches out and grabs Puck's hand.

Her hand suddenly in his brings him back to this moment, allows him to breathe again. He laces their fingers together, squeezes her hand a little.

Both of their attention is quickly drawn away from each other as the doctor finally puts the wand on Quinn's stomach as she says, "Okay, let's look for that baby girl."

It takes what feels like the longest minute and a half ever, but finally the doctor smiles as she says, "There she is."

And indeed, there she is. Quinn's reading was right; they could make out a head and a body (not exactly in proportion to each other at the moment). The doctor is pressing a bunch of buttons doing something but neither of them really notice. This is their baby girl and the weight of that gives their hearts extra beats.

The doctor talking half draws them out of their trance as she tells them, "Just as I thought by the physical exam, your baby is perfectly healthy. Right where she's supposed to be with weight and size and heart rate. Have you heard her heartbeat yet? During your previous medical care?"

"No," Quinn answers, shocked she managed to find her voice.

"Oh, well we can't have that," the doctor says and fiddles with the machine again, pressing button's and turning knobs, before suddenly there's a rapid beat filling the room.

Quinn can feel her breath catch in her throat and tears starting to form in her eyes. She knew the baby had a heartbeat and she knew the baby was real and that she had to take care of it. But hearing the rapid "wuum wuum" sound made the baby real in a way it simply wasn't before. She had seen the fuzzy picture of the baby inside her and seen the more baby-like one now, but the heartbeat coming from within her that wasn't hers – it made her daughter tangible in a way that she hadn't been before.

Hearing the heartbeat made the baby more real for Puck as well. He wasn't the one having it and for a while it didn't even seem like it would be acknowledged as his so the baby had been an idea. Now, it was a definite reality. His first thought with the new weight of things was that he should call Hank. He needs a job, he'll need to have money to take care of the baby and Hank was supposed to call him but why the hell is he waiting for a phone call? The baby is coming and it's not going to stop coming. He needs to get moving on making some money. And furthermore, about that heartbeat, is it normal? That's a thought that needs to be voiced. It's a struggle to find his voice right now, but he manages, "That sounds fast. Like _really fast_. Is that normal?"

Quinn feels her own heartbeat increase at that and wishes she had a clear enough head to ask it herself because he's right, it doesn't sound normal.

"It's completely normal," Dr. Massey is quick to assure, smiling as she adds, "A baby's heart rate is faster than the average adult's and it's supposed to be. Don't worry about it. Your baby is absolutely perfect."

Both Quinn and Puck let out the breath they didn't know they had been holding.

"Okay," the doctor says as she has her hand poised over the machine like she's about to do something so they could move on from this.

Puck's not quite ready to let this moment go though (and he can see the tears rolling down the sides of Quinn's face so he's not so sure she is either) so he interrupts asking, "Can we just have another moment with this? I just remembered I can record stuff on my phone and this is something worth using that application for."

"Absolutely. A lot of people record the first time they hear the baby's heartbeat. I think it's a great idea," Dr. Massey easily agrees.

With his free hand (the one not clenched so hard in Quinn's hand that he's not sure where his hand ends and hers begins) Puck gets out his phone and records the sound of the heartbeat filling the room.

Once Puck's putting his phone back in his pocket, Dr. Massey asks, "Ready for me to turn everything off? And just so you know this isn't really the end because you get to take home a DVD and a little eight picture booklet of this sonogram."

Quinn forces out a nod because it has to end and Puck manages a small, "Yeah."

It's not until the doctor has turned off the sound and the image has disappeared from the screen that Quinn notices the wetness on her cheeks. She tries to wipe it away discreetly as the doctor is preoccupied getting their DVD and pictures and Puck is slumped over looking like he's letting out a sigh of relief.

The doctor gives them the DVD and pictures and her card insisting that Quinn call any time she needs anything. She wishes them both good health, tells Quinn to schedule another appointment for the end of January, and tells Quinn she can go ahead and get dressed again.

Quinn asks Puck to wait for her in the hall so she doesn't have to spend her time changing worried or uncomfortable. Puck, after how inconveniently turned on he was last time, is happy to leave the room.

The walk out to his truck is silent, as is the drive to Puck's apartment- the gravity of their situation settling in, in a whole new way.

When they get to the apartment building they can't stay silent any longer. Puck puts his truck in park, leans back in his seat, and asks regarding what they're about to do in telling Kelyn, "So, what do you want to do?"

"I don't know," Quinn responds distantly (knowing he was asking about right now but answering for how she felt about everything).

-o-o-o-

Quinn finds herself sitting in the Puckerman's apartment alone. Puck had to get Kelyn from a downstairs neighbor and she asked to go ahead without him so she could let her sister know that the appointment went fine before they get into their conversation with Kelyn. So Puck had given her his keys and she let herself in. She sat down on the sofa in the living room, where she still is, and she texted her sister. She knew she should probably actually talk to her- Jessica would want to talk to her- but Quinn didn't feel like talking right now. She felt overwhelmed and she knew she needed to stop feeling that way so they could tell Kelyn the truth.

"You don't need candy. We'll be having dinner in like an hour," Puck comes in saying.

"But I had dance class and then you had the stupid Taylors pick me up and they don't have anything but health food in their house," Kelyn complains.

"You could eat something healthy," Puck returns.

"I will when you do," Kelyn volleys before her footsteps thunder from the entry way to the kitchen.

Puck follows after her saying, "Kel, seriously, we're eating not that long from now you shouldn't be eating a bunch of candy and then no dinner. Mom will be pissed."

"Does it look like I'm eating candy doufus? I never said candy, I said I wanted something with sugar," Kelyn says opening up a package of Pop-Tarts.

"Fine. Eat those, I give up," Puck concedes. "Uh," he says remembering what he was supposed to be doing and looking around the room because Quinn was supposed to be here.

Quinn had been listening to the siblings argue trying to will herself to get up and walk over to the same area of the apartment as them, but she had been unsuccessful so far. When she hears Puck's pause though, she knows that if she doesn't get up and go to them now it'll seem like she was hiding from this and she doesn't seem afraid (even if she is- of everything). So she gets up and walks to the front of the living room, in clear view of the kitchen. Kelyn has her head buried in the refrigerator though and doesn't notice her approaching the room (Puck notices and almost covers his ears in anticipation of what's coming). So when Kelyn finally settles on some orange juice and shuts the fridge door, she's pleasantly stunned to see her former babysitter standing two feet to her right. She screams, just as Puck thought she would, and luckly catches the fact that she has something in her hand and puts it down on the counter before launching herself at Quinn.

"Quinn! You're here!" Kelyn exclaims happily as she tightly embraces Quinn.

Quinn hugs back, smiling. "Yeah, I'm here. I came to see you," she responds, wishing her visit with Kelyn was as simple as that.

Kelyn pulls away a little and tells Quinn earnestly, "I missed you."

"I missed you too," Quinn responds honestly. She feels her eyes getting a little glassy and writes it off as the hormones (and not that Kelyn saying she missed her reminded her of how much she missed everything from her life from when she babysat the girl).

Kelyn smiles at her again for a second before the smile suddenly fades as she says, "Something's different."

Rather than denying or asking where Kelyn got that from (in his experience, the kid had a freaky way of reading people), Puck simply says, "Yeah it is and we need to talk to you about it so grab your juice and Pop-Tart and take a seat."

It's a small kitchen table, one chair fitting on each side, so while Puck takes the seat across from Kelyn, Quinn takes one that's to the side of both of them.

"You want to?" Puck asks Quinn because they hadn't really figured out how they were going to do any of this. The best they had come up with in the car was that they'd try to field any question as best they could and that they'd be honest, but not tell Kelyn things that they didn't think she should know.

Quinn didn't really want to have to tell another person, but it is technically more her news than his. "I'm pregnant," she says simply, evenly. (She glances down at the table, away from the girl's eyes, afraid to know what's there.) It is getting easier to tell people, to admit out loud, and she supposes that's a good change. At least something in her life is getting easier.

"And the baby is mine too," Puck is quick to add on so his sister doesn't get any misconceptions about the situation. He doesn't look away from his sister, needing to know how she's going to react, how she's going to look at him, think of him, now.

Kelyn isn't sure what they expect her to do. It seems like they're waiting for something from her. "Okay," she accepts, not knowing what else to do.

"Okay?" Puck questions, brows furrowing confused. That's it? Okay?

So they are expecting something from her….wait, Kelyn thinks she catches on and accuses, "Wait this means you saw Quinn when you said I couldn't, doesn't it? I knew you were lying when you said she was too busy to see me. I'm telling mom you lied to me."

"She already knows," Puck returns, kind of confused about the direction this was going.

Quinn was confused too. Kelyn didn't seem concerned about the idea that her brother is having a baby with her former babysitter at all. Maybe she didn't understand. Quinn asks, "Kelyn do you understand everything? Do you have any questions about how this happened or what will happen now?"

"Yeah, we'll explain anything," Puck adds on, "except how babies are made. That you can learn in your health class next year. I'm not explaining it."

"I already know," Kelyn says, surprising them both (fourth graders didn't usually know that sort of thing, right?), "Shelly Austin told me last year." She continues, face twisted in disgust, "And if what she said is right, then I really _don't _want to know _how_ you two made a baby."

The idea of sharing those kind of details with his little sister grossed Puck out as well. As did the idea that she already knew what sex was.

Quinn takes charge again accepting, "Okay. But last time I saw you I was just friends with your brother. Don't you have questions about how I'm now pregnant by him or what we are now or what's going to happen next?"

Kelyn thinks on it for a second since they were making such a big deal out of it, but tells them honestly, "No." Since Quinn and her brother seem completely confused by her answer, Kelyn elaborates, "I don't see what the big deal is. I get that you're young to have a baby, but this happens to people on TV all the time."

"You're not supposed to be watching _Gossip Girl_ anymore," Puck reminds her, thinking that was where she had gotten the idea in her head that this wasn't an unusual situation.

"I'm not," she denies, "but I did watch every episode of _Degrassi_. There was a marathon."

"I told mom to block that channel too," Puck comments not understanding how she could be watching it.

"Her parental lock code is her birthday," Kelyn supplies only to realize that she probably shouldn't have revealed that she knew that because now it would be changed.

Quinn's starting to get frustrated because Kelyn seems to be missing the point and Puck keep getting sidetracked. "This isn't normal," she tells Kelyn, "it's…" she trails off because she doesn't want Kelyn to know everything that the situation is. She's just a kid, she should get to think that life and people are better than a full explanation of everything would allow her to believe.

"Complicated," Puck supplies, getting back on track. "Quinn's life has been changed by this a lot, and not for the better," he admits guiltily.

That was true, but Quinn could see that in a way he was shouldering the blame in this moment and that wasn't really fair. "Everything is changed because of this, for both of us," she rephrases his words, adding, "and it may change things for you too."

Kelyn doesn't see how that could be true so she asks, "How?"

Neither of them had a good answer to that. Their lives would be changing and Kelyn would be in both their lives so it made sense that the changes would affect her. But how does one explain to a ten year old that her world will simply be different from now on? In which ways, they don't know. Simply different from what she's always known.

Puck decides to go answer based on the end result because it seemed slightly easier to explain. "Well, what happens with all of this could affect you. We don't know what we're going to do yet but you could either have a niece or…not."

To clarify, Quinn adds, "We're not really…equipped to take care of her. My parents are not going to help with anything and it's unlikely we'd be able to get the kind of work we'd need due to our ages. So it might be best for the baby if she grows up with a family who can take care of her."

Kelyn understands the words they're saying to her. If they think they can't take care of a baby, then they should give it to another family. It made sense to her- seemed simple. So she shrugs and offers, "Okay. I'm pretty sure I don't like babies anyway. I mean, I really don't like the kids in the younger grades so I figure I wouldn't like a baby much."

Again, neither or them know how to respond. If the idea of the baby disappearing from their lives doesn't make Kelyn sad though, they both suppose they shouldn't try to explain everything more so that she understands how heartbreaking it would be. There's no point to make her upset about something that she's not upset about.

"So, you're cool about everything?" Puck checks.

"Yeah," Kelyn confirms and realizes, "unless Quinn's going to leave now because I am. I'm not cool with her leaving already. And since you're having his baby, does that mean I get to see you more now?"

"Well, no, I don't need to leave now and I suppose I'll be around more since I'll be here for all eight nights of Hanukah," Quinn responds.

"Awesome," Kelyn declares as she gets up and grabs Quinn's hand and tugs her out of her chair as she says, "you have to come see my costume for my dance recital. And my soccer trophy. Did Noah tell you I played soccer this year?"

Quinn lets the girl drag her to her room. She glances back at Puck as she follows the girl, unsure what to think of how this whole thing went. Puck just shrugs, seeming to know the uncertainty she was thinking of.

-o-o-o-

Quinn lets Kelyn show her all the things she wanted to and she tries to interact normally with the girl as she sits on her bed and listens to her talk. It feels difficult to be normal today somehow though.

As Kelyn talks, Quinn keeps noticing things around the girl's bedroom. She has a pattern of stickers on the wall that she clearly did herself. She has drawings on the wall and pictures of herself with her mom and her brother and her friends- all just taped there, no frames. She has glow in the dark stars on the ceiling and clothes littered everywhere. She has a stuffed bear on her bed that looks so worn it must be from when she was an infant. It felt like the room was thoroughly hers; full of her life and her story. It's not at all like Quinn's bedroom growing up- overly designed and impersonal.

(This is the type of room her daughter could have. It's the kind she'd want her to have over one that was like her own. But it's the kind she's probably going to miss out on too. All of the history that will be behind her own little girl's bedroom, she's not going to be a part of any of it, not if she does what she knows she should do.)

Quinn picks up the bear, hoping that feeling something in her hands will distract her from everything else she's feeling.

Kelyn, though she had been ranting about why she was no longer friends with a girl named Amanda as she dug in her closet for the shoes that were supposed to go with her dance recital costume, glances at Quinn and notices the bear she picked up. She stops her story and her mission of finding the shoes and tells Quinn, "Noah gave that to me. It was his." Catching the slight surprise in Quinn's face, Kelyn continues telling her, "I don't remember when he gave it to me. I was like two or something. But he says that he gave it to me so I'd have something to hold on to whenever I needed something to hold. And once I asked him why he would do that because what if he wanted something to hold on to and he said it was more important that I had something than if he did. Mom said it used to be his favorite thing until he was like five, which is why it's always been one of my favorite things, because it was his favorite and he wanted me to have it more than he wanted it for himself. He's a good brother like that." Considering her last statement, and since he had kept Quinn away from her and was probably going to tell their mom that she cracked the TV's parental code, Kelyn adds, "Sometimes."

Quinn doesn't know what to say. She feels like crying and this time she's pretty sure it has nothing to do with her fluctuating hormones. She thinks crying randomly might freak Kelyn out though so she tries hard not to and manages quite well. She takes a couple of slow, discreet, deep breaths to calm herself and so she doesn't sound like she has a watery voice next time she speaks.

Kelyn, who hadn't noticed anything odd as she got distracted by spotting one of her elusive shoes underneath her dresser, pulls the shoe out only to have a thought finally occur to her. "You and Noah aren't together, right?" she asks.

"No," Quinn answers simply and she's relieved that she was able to give such a short answer because she wasn't quite ready to trust her voice to be even beyond a syllable. She finds it curious how Kelyn suddenly asked her that though so she clears her throat, hopes her voice doesn't give away the flood of emotion she's been feeling, and asks (quite controlled), "How did you know that we we're not together?" They just told her they were having a baby together, wasn't it logical that she assumed they were together instead of that they weren't?

Kelyn shrugs and answers, "Noah hasn't been happy for a while now. He was, right after you stopped watching me, but he's not now and shouldn't being with you make him happy? So if he's not, you must not be his girlfriend right now."

Before Quinn can think anything more than that that was surprisingly logical of the ten year old girl, there's a knock on the door and May pokes her head in, "Hey kid," she greets Kelyn, "shouldn't you be doing homework?" Before Kelyn can whine in protest (it's clear she's about to), May continues, "Quinn's going to come help me with dinner and you need to get to work on your homework. Bring what you have done to dinner when it's ready so I can see that you've done something."

Quinn gets up as per May's directions and follows her out to Kelyn's grumbling about doing her homework.

May stops in the hall after shutting her daughter's bedroom door and gives Quinn a quick hug hello. After she pulls away inquires, "How'd the doctor's appointment go?"

"Good. Everything is fine," Quinn answers succinctly. Realizing that they had pictures that had yet to be mentioned or used, she adds, "I have sonogram pictures actually. They're in my bag." She gestures to the living room because May seems to be detouring to the kitchen.

"Grab them and meet us in the kitchen. Noah was just about to tell me how your talk with Kelyn went while I start dinner," May tells her.

When she joins them in the kitchen a second later May looks perplexed. She checks with Quinn, "Noah just said that he doesn't think Kel cared that you're pregnant. Is that what you thought too?"

"Yeah, kind of," Quinn admits. It didn't seem like the girl thought the situation was anything to be concerned about.

"Huh," May says, mulling it over. She goes back to what she was doing- chopping carrots- and stops after a minute offering, "Well, I guess that's…okay. Maybe what's going on will just take a while for her to realize. I'll talk to my therapist though anyway, just to make sure." She notices the object in Quinn's hand and wipes her hands on a dishtowel as she says, "Oh, the pictures. Let's see them."

Quinn walks over to her and holds up the top one, the others unfolding from it in one long chain.

May looks at each of them closely, smiling a little. She comments, "Now these are much better than that last video. She looks more like a baby now. And this is so much clearer than the ones I had for Noah or Kelyn at any stage of my pregnancies with them." She adds on with a smile to Quinn, "She's going to be gorgeous."

Quinn suddenly feels like the room is getting smaller. She shifts her eyes away from May, but catches Puck's and feels worse. She's feeling another deluge of emotion and she doesn't feel like being here is the best idea at the moment. She needs to leave, but she doesn't want to be rude about it. So she leans back and slumps against the counter behind her as she closes her eyes for a second.

May notices and immediately asks concerned, "Quinn honey are you alright?"

She snaps her eyes open and responds, "I'm fine." She yawns and lies, "I'm just really tired." She considers, "Maybe I should just go home and take a nap- if you wouldn't mind me taking a rain check on dinner."

"No of course not," May responds, "you should go home and get some rest. You can come over another night. The baby's health and your health is more important than anything else so go home and get some sleep."

"Thank you," Quinn says gratefully (and feeling guilty because she'd lying to leave a very nice and understanding woman). She adds (because she's trying to ease her guilt), "And I promise I'll come over again some other time- besides Hanukah."

May smiles and declares, "I'm going to hold you to that honey." She hugs Quinn and tells her, "I'm so glad you came over." She pulls away and smiles at Quinn as she tells her, "Now go home and get some rest and I'll call you tomorrow."

"Okay. Thank you," Quinn repeats again.

Since Puck drove her there and she wants to go home, he's already gotten up from the table and grabbed his coat. He walks with her to the door before asking if she wanted to say goodbye to Kelyn, which she does quickly before leaving.

The drive to her house is silent. She pretends to be nearly asleep since it was her excuse to get out of there and she'd feel awful if they thought she was lying.

Puck seems to at least suspect that something is up because as he parks in front of her house he asks, "Is everything okay? I mean, did I do something-"

"No," she denies immediately because so far giving him a chance hadn't been a mistake and it would be wrong if he thought that. "I'm fine," she insists, "I'm just tired."

He nods, trying to accept her words but not completely believing her. If she says she's tired and that's all that's going on though, he doesn't want to come off like he doesn't believe her. She just confirmed that he hasn't done anything wrong yet and he doesn't want to mess that up already. So he offers, compensating her feelings, "Yeah, that doctor did mention about that being common- being tired- and plus today was kind of a big day anyway." Could "big day" be taken badly? As soon as it's out of his mouth he starts to worry that there's some way she could take that wrong so he explains, "I mean, I know everything was probably already pretty real to you, you're the one that's pregnant, but to me, today kind of changed things. Everything feels more real than it did this morning."

"Yeah, it does," she agrees (and right now she's really glad she decided to include him because it's reassuring that he felt something similar today). She stares out at the street in front of them and considers trying to tell him how she's been feeling, how there's been a weight settled in her chest making it feel like it's difficult to breath and how she has an overwhelming urge to cry. But she doesn't know how to clearly explain what she's feeling and she doesn't know why she's feeling it- she's not even sure she wants to think on that much, rather just push it away. Maybe it'd be best if she pushed everything away. If she has to give the baby up for adoption, then today really can't matter. "I'm just tired though," she insists again, not feeling comfortable with the idea of sharing at the moment. "I'll see you tomorrow," she tells him as she hurriedly hops out of his truck and heads for her front door.

She had the door shut before he could even respond. That was odd and paired with the fact that he didn't completely believe her about why she suddenly wanted to go home, he thinks something isn't right here. But he just got let in finally, he's not going to push. He's too afraid of losing everything to tempt his hard earned fortune. So Puck simply drives away deciding that he'll find an excuse to see her first thing in the morning at school, just to check in and see how she is.

Quinn's mother is in the dinning room right off the foyer setting the table when she comes in and her father is just coming out of his office into the foyer. She ignores their presence and rushes up the stairs. (She tells herself not to look back because knowing they weren't concerned despite her hasty entrance would only make her feel worse.)

She bursts into tears the second she steps foot in her bedroom- unable to quell the urge to cry any longer. She spends hours curled up and sobbing. She doesn't know where this is coming from and mostly because it's coming from so many things.

She's crying because she heard her daughter's heartbeat for the first time today and a woman hearing something like that should make her happy. But she's sixteen and it's not that simple for her to have a single emotion attached to a single event.

(She's crying because it did make her happy to hear her daughter's heartbeat. It made her feel connected to her in a way she's never been connected to anyone.

And she might have to lose that.)

She's crying because her daughter looks so different from the last time she saw her. She keeps growing and developing and she's going to get here soon and Quinn's not ready. She has money in the bank but absolutely no plan and she's been avoiding even thinking about what's right.

(She's crying because she feels like she's back in that night, the night she found out she's pregnant- completely lost.)

She's crying because it didn't feel entirely wrong to be there with Puck today, but it didn't feel right to be there under their circumstances either.

(She's crying because she's more confused than ever about _them_ and she didn't even want to be thinking about _them_ right now. _They_ were supposed to be irrelevant for now.)

She crying because doesn't know what to do and she doesn't even know how she feels anymore.

She's crying because the one thing she does know she feels is terrified. Lately she had been pushing the fear aside by keeping busy with things that needed to get done. But today, with seeing her daughter and hearing her heartbeat and holding his hand, everything pushed aside snuck up on her like a tidal wave.

So she gives into the ever increasing fears that caught up with her today and spends the night crying and hoping that tomorrow she'll be able to functionally ignore them again.

-o-o-o-

Wednesday morning Quinn tells herself it's a new day and to forget that yesterday even happened.

This mission is instantly complicated by her morning call to her sister because Jessica is convinced something's wrong. She lies and tells her sister that things are just difficult sometimes, but she's fine, everything is fine. Jessica isn't convinced and she only lets Quinn go because she has to go to school.

Quinn's successful at concentrating on her classes and forgetting about everything else (even the way people bump into her like she's nothing in the halls).

On her way to her fourth period class though she sees Torres (hockey team, moron) waiting near her class with a slushie in his hand and two laughing buddies by his side. She's thirty feet down the hall from them and luckily they don't see her so she turns around and ducks into the nearest girls bathroom.

She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she waits in the bathroom and she doesn't feel like she recognizes the girl staring back at her. Not because she's pregnant and so many other things she'd never thought she'd be in high school, but because she's in here hiding. She doesn't know what _she_ would/should do, but she knows that this isn't it. Still, she doesn't leave until after the bell rings so she knows that no one will be hanging around in the hall. It's the first time she's been late to a class in all of high school.

Quinn makes it through the whole school day without thoughts of yesterday consuming her. (Except one brief moment when she first got to school and Puck asked her how she was, but when she lied and said she felt much better after getting a lot of sleep, he accepted it and moved on and it was pushed aside and ignored once again). And after school she has Rachel to distract her from everything.

Quinn doesn't get a single word in the whole ride to Rachel's house as Rachel is dissecting the girls' Madonna performance (they rehearsed for the last time today). And talking about Madonna and Rachel not mentioning why she wanted to talk to her today makes Quinn's curiosity about this whole situation grow. (She briefly wonders if Rachel made up the crisis that made her need someone to talk to. Maybe she just wanted to hang out but didn't know how to ask to do that so she made something up. Quinn could easily see feeling that way and suspects she would if their roles were reversed.)

It turns out Rachel did have a crisis though. As soon as they make it to Rachel's house and they're up in her room (just in case her dad's come home, even though they're not supposed to be for hours), Rachel dives into her problem a mile a minute. "So last Saturday," she begins, "there was this teen mixer at our temple and my dads thought it'd be a good idea for me to go. And I sometimes I find that I can't develop good arguments to convince them that their ideas are bad and this was one of those times. So I went and it was boring as usual- I've been to a few others. The DJ they hire always refuses my requests to play anything from a musical. But who wouldn't want to slow dance to "Music of the Night"? It'd be so romantic. Anyway, I met a boy. He's a little bit older. And he was cute and nice and he mostly had good taste in music. He seemed to like me. Like really _like me_. I was having a good time with him. Admitting this kind of makes me feel like Santana, but I even made out with him in a darkened hallway away from the dance. It was nice. _Really nice_. And then when he asked me for my number I told him I couldn't give it to him and I left. I don't know why I did that. It doesn't make any logical sense. He was a great guy and I never have any guys interested in me. Why would I turn him down?"

"Because you like Finn," Quinn supplies, which she thought would have been obvious.

"No," Rachel denies, "Finn doesn't want to be with me so I don't want to be with him. I want to move on. I want to find someone else. And I did find someone else. It just didn't work for some reason and I need to figure out why so I can fix it and find someone else or find that guy again. He was here visiting family for the holiday and he's actually from Toledo, but even though it's a big town I'm sure I could find him. And I could make long distance work too. I just need to figure out and fix whatever problem I'm having."

Okay, so apparently the real issue Rachel was having was her stubbornness and denial, which Quinn understood and the only way she saw to deal with it was to confront it. "The problem is that you want to not like Finn anymore, but just because you're determined not to like him anymore doesn't make your feelings go away. For right now at least, you still like him and that's not just going to disappear because you met a guy who likes you," Quinn tells her and she understands the bit of irony in what she's telling Rachel because she's been in the same place- trying not to want someone, but wanting them all the same.

"If my feelings for Finn haven't gone away though, then why did I turn him down when he told me he changed his mind about us on Monday?" Rachel asks, pulling at the threads on the bedspread, worried that nothing she's been doing lately has been making any sense to her.

That was a twist Quinn wasn't expecting. Now Finn wanted to be with Rachel all of a sudden? What was he doing? All of this back-and-forth didn't seem like him. (It's probably her fault that he's like this now, Quinn figures.) "That's just your head protecting your heart," Quinn explains, "he's hurt you too much for you to just believe him anymore. Maybe even though you'll still like him, you won't ever trust him enough again to give him a chance. Or maybe after a little while you'll find a reason to believe that if you gave him another chance he wouldn't hurt you this time." (She got the irony here too.)

"I have always been very smart," Rachel says, considering Quinn's theory for her behavior. "It's not always like me to be that cautious, but I think you're probably right. I do still have feelings for Finn, but when he told me he was wrong before in saying he didn't want to be with me, I didn't really believe him- not after…everything," Rachel offers. She smiles a little at Quinn and says gratefully, "Thank you, for talking to me about this. Doing the opposite of what I would expect myself to do in those situations, I thought I was going insane."

"You're welcome. And I don't think you've done anything anyone would do in your place," Quinn offers because Rachel is just being cautious and Quinn believes her own cautiousness has been one of her better decisions of late.

Rachel looks slightly uncomfortable, because she never usually does this sort of thing, as she offers, "You know, if you ever need to talk to anyone, I have excellent listening skills. Plus I'd enjoy the opportunity to repay you for listening to and helping me."

Talking to someone freely and honestly has never been Quinn's strong suit. She's been working on it though just like she's been working on making real friends. She's had a lot on her mind in the last twenty-four hours, but the last thing she wants to do is talk about it. So she responds, "With everything going on, I'll probably be taking you up on that at some point." She didn't want it to seem like she was opposed to the idea (because she knows Rachel is really asking her if she'd like to try to really develop a friendship instead of simply moving past their past like they had done), but she didn't want to confess everything on her mind right now either.

Rachel takes the response as the positive step forward that Quinn intended and smiles happily. She tries to talk about normal things for a few minutes because she feels she needs practice at "girl-talk" and Quinn was already here so it seemed like a good opportunity. Rachel's "normal" talk consists of trying to gossip about Artie and Tina- because everyone had gotten the idea that things hadn't been completely okay between them since coming back from break. Though, by gossip, it turned out that they both just speculated about what could be wrong and how they could possibly help make it right- and then Quinn deciding (and insisting) that they really shouldn't get involved in Artie and Tina's business though.

After they've been hanging out for about an hour Rachel asks Quinn if she'd like to stay for dinner. Quinn, though spending time with Rachel had been effective at helping her forget that yesterday existed, declines because spending time with a happy family feels like it may bring everything from yesterday back. Rachel, always intent on getting what she wants, tries to persuade Quinn but ultimately lets it go when Quinn mentions all of her homework and how she's been feeling more tired lately.

Quinn goes home and works her way through her homework with care- drawing it out not only to make sure she maintains her good grades but so she also has something else to think about for a while longer.

(In the night it's hard to forget the previous day though as her dreams contain that "wuum wuum" sound and she wakes up with a hand on her stomach.)

-o-o-o-

Puck's Wednesday kind of sucks.

First, he chickens out with Quinn. When she said she felt much better since she got a lot of sleep, he didn't believe her again. It sort of seems like she's telling the truth, but there's something about her that's been nagging at him and he thinks she's hiding something. Not to mention that her sudden leaving kind of sounded like the "out" he'd created for her for Thanksgiving. But he doesn't want to rock the boat, so to speak. A few weeks ago he never would have been able to just talk to her in the hall and he doesn't want to lose the fact that things are currently okay between them. So he acts like he believes her completely and moves on to talk about meaningless things.

And then he had tutoring with Artie. The Artie part was fine, but the subject of the tutoring- chemistry- was really ruining his day. When would he ever need to know anything about chemistry anyway? It's not like this would help him get a permanent job with Hank (who he called last night and he's going to start shadowing next Monday- Hank was busy with other stuff until then) or raise a baby or know how to figure out what was the right thing for him and Quinn to do about the baby or how to be with Quinn at all. So since it's useless to him and he seems unable to understand it unless Artie explains the same thing for an hour, he's really getting frustrated with the whole tutoring idea.

Thankfully, after trying to get through his current chapter for the last hour and a half, Artie detours from the material he was supposed to be helping Puck understand. "You know how I said I'd think of a way for you to repay me for tutoring you and you were okay with that?" Artie asks. Puck nods so Artie continues, "I thought of something I need your help with."

Since Artie doesn't immediately continue, Puck prompts, "Okay, what?"

"Well, you have a lot of experience with girls," Artie begins, looking uncomfortable about the topic he's addressing, "I don't have any experience really and I think that that caused me to do something wrong. I didn't think that by making plans that didn't include Tina over break I was doing anything wrong. My brother and I have been having a Halo tournament with the same people online every year for like three years now. Though I know now that I probably shouldn't have let all of her calls during those two days go to voicemail. Anyway, Tina's been mad at me for days and I need to fix it."

"Just because I've been with a lot of girls doesn't make me good with them," Puck responds honestly. He points out, "And looking at my life and the current situation I'm in with Quinn, what really makes you think that I'd know how to make things right with a girl?"

"The fact that you're here," Artie offers kind of confused because it was obvious that he was talking to Quinn again so his many apparent efforts must have paid off to a degree. If that wasn't making things right with someone, he didn't know what was. Puck doesn't seem to believe him though, to believe that he's really made as much progress as everyone else can see. So Artie continues, "I don't know if you're where you wanted to be with her and I don't know either of you that well. But I think everyone has noticed how much you've changed and how hard you worked to do it and how that change made Quinn change." He adds, "If you really don't know anything that could help me out, that's fine. But I think you've been making all the right moves lately to get what you want."

Puck knew that he had made progress with Quinn and he did think that that was due to all the changes he'd been trying to make in his life, in the better man he'd been trying to be. But he didn't think that happening to do something that got positive results eventually put him into a position where her should be giving advice. He was generally a screw up; he just happened to do something right this time and it took the advice and reassurance of a few other people to make sure he was doing the right thing. If Artie thought he actually knew how to make good choices though, maybe he had learned how to. Maybe he hadn't just gotten lucky, maybe he had learned how to be better. So he considers Artie's problem and offers, "Have you tried apologizing? Beyond an 'I'm sorry,' and elaborating with an apology for everything she thinks you did wrong?"

"No," Artie admits embarrassed because that seemed like an obvious idea he should have tried by now.

"I'd try that," Puck offers. He doesn't want to accidentally be responsible for getting Artie into an even worse place with Tina though, so he warns, "I have no idea if it would work though. I'd still try it, but I've had a tendency to get myself into even worse situations sometimes." How he's checked that his ideas aren't bad lately has him getting out his phone and calling a number as he says, "Lately I've been running things across this woman though- Addie. I met her a while ago and she's really helpful about stuff. I'll just ask her what you should do real quick."

Addie answers on the second ring and Puck is quick to tell her that he's calling for advice, but not for himself. He recaps Artie's situation and asks Addie if apologizing would be the right route. She agrees that it'd be a good place to start. She also tells him that a gesture wouldn't hurt- swearing to never ignore her calls again, telling her he has the whole week free to spend time with her any time she's able to, etc.

Before Puck thanks her and hangs up to tell Artie what Addie told him, she mentions, "Quinn hasn't called or been by. Did you remember to give her my number and tell her I'm here if she needs anything?"

It gives Puck pause, almost makes him forget what he was doing (why wouldn't Quinn call Addie or go see her?). He remembers what he's doing though and tells Addie, "Yeah, I did all that. I don't know why she'd do that but I'll try to figure it out." He thanks her and says goodbye (trying to focus on what's going on now instead of all the stuff that's been confusing him lately).

"Thanks, that's really helpful," Artie says gratefully after hearing the suggestions from the person Puck called. He continues, "I couldn't talk to my brother about this- every time I mention Tina he won't shut up teasing me about having a girlfriend. To be fair I did the same thing to him a few years ago. And I can't talk to my mom because she would take Tina's side and be mad at me too if I told her- she really likes Tina. I asked my dad but he said to just buy her flowers. But Tina doesn't like flowers- she says there's no point in buying something that's going to die. So I've been kind of stuck for people to go to advice for." He adds again, "So thank you for helping me."

"No problem," Puck responds, "I owe you for the tutoring anyway."

Speaking of the tutoring, Artie gets them back to work on Puck's chemistry. Sometimes it was really odd to realize he was tutoring and maybe, sort of, starting to become friends with Puck. Puck used to pull pranks on him semi-frequently and yet here they were talking like none of that ever happened. It was definitely a nice change though.

Puck knows he used to treat the guy tutoring him pretty badly- along with a few other members of the glee club. Sometimes he felt like he should apologize for it. But they all seemed willing to ignore the past now that he was trying to not be that guy (especially to them) so was it then really necessary to apologize if everyone was pretending it never happened? Yeah, Puck knew that the answer to that was likely yes, but for now he'd see how long he could get away with not acknowledging past crimes.

(Speaking of past crimes, he wondered how long it would be before he'd tell Quinn the truth about why he pushed her away after they babysat together. He knew he needed to tell her that, that there was never a time he didn't want either one of them, that he just got stupid about what would be right. But what if telling her the truth just messed them up again?

What if they were already messed up again and that was why he couldn't understand what was going on with Quinn since Tuesday or why in the last three weeks she hadn't called Addie?

He found that now that he was finally in her life again, he was less willing to take any kind of actions because he was thoroughly afraid of losing everything- again.)

-o-o-o-

The rest of the week goes by pretty quickly.

The girls perform their Madonna number, Mr. Schue tries to wrangle the boys into a sappy song, and they end up settling on a whole-club number.

After school on Friday Quinn decides to go to the rally that's going to introduce the basketball players and hockey players for the year. She didn't particularly want to go and sit alone surrounded by a student body that has a pretty awful opinion of her. But she knew that is she sat front and center for the Cheerio's opening performance, with a critical eye on them and Coach Sylvester, Coach Sylvester would get more curious about what Quinn told her she missed. And honestly she enjoyed the idea of toying with Coach Sylvester like that, especially with how harshly she had kicked her off the team (not to mention her general treatment of the team).

She's stunned when Mercedes and Kurt are part of the Cheerio's performance and apparently a part of the Cheerio's now if their uniforms are any indication. She knew Kurt said his and Mercedes' video project involved Coach Sylvester, but this was an unexpected turn of events. On the one hand she knew Kurt had wanted to be part of the team for a while and that both him and Mercedes wanted anything like this that would boost their popularity. But on the other hand she knew how Coach Sylvester operated and she worried that this could end up being a bad thing for both of them.

She's too surprised by the performance's new members to carry out her plan, unfortunately. Now she'll probably have to come to another one of these events. Though people seem to be pretty absorbed in themselves, barely even noticing she's there at all, which is good for now.

Quinn leaves right after the performance, having another mission to carry out- and hopefully this one successfully. She knew Finn was on the basketball team again and she knew Carol worked Friday afternoons, which meant neither one of them would be home. So she stops by the bank, writes a short thank you note, and puts money and the note in an envelope she puts through the Hudson's mail slot. She had told Carol she'd pay her back for her hospitality and expenses she had cost her when she had lived there and she meant it.

After her brief stop at the Hudson's, Quinn heads home. She's finally decided on which car insurance company to go with (prices were all higher than she was hoping so it's a difficult decision) and she's hoping to get signed up with them today so she doesn't have to keep driving uninsured. (Not to mention that setting that up over the phone with a customer service representative will probably be frustrating and therefore a very effective distraction for keeping Tuesday non-existent.)

However, the rest of her day didn't go as Quinn planned thanks to what she found when she came home: her mom in her bedroom.

She's stunned to find her bedroom door open and even more surprised when her mom is standing across the room at Quinn's desk, her back to the door Quinn just walked through. The fact that her mother has picked up and is looking at the sonogram pictures is beyond surprising, Quinn can't even process it.

"What are you doing in here?" she asks, trying not to hope that this was a good sign because when it turned out not to be she'd only be hurt more.

"Oh!" Judy exclaims startled. She jumps a little, hand flying to her chest, and drops the pictures as she turns around and says, "You're back. Good, that's good. I was just going to leave you a note." She glances back at the surface of the desk, where the pictures are, and adds, "Then I saw the pictures and I…" Judy stops, seeming at a loss for words to explain her actions.

"What were you leaving a note about?" Quinn asks, returning them to her mother's purpose and passing up the pictures.

"Just we have some, um, extra left over's. You know how your father won't eat the same thing more than twice in one week and I was just going to throw them out, but then I figured they shouldn't go to waste if you wanted them," Judy rambles. She takes two nervous steps forward toward Quinn, but stops herself, unsure of what she should do. She wrings her hands together and tries to smile as she changes the subject again, "So how was your doctor's appointment?"

"Fine," Quinn answers shortly. She didn't understand what was going on here.

"And school?" Judy inquires.

"Fine," Quinn replies tersely again. Did her mother care now? Because her mom hadn't spoken to her in over two weeks. Sure she left her some Thanksgiving leftovers, but the last time she said anything was two weeks ago when she said she'd keep paying her medical bills. Which, again, was a nice thing. But what were they supposed to be?

"How's the father's family? Are they… helping?" Judy stumbles out.

Quinn couldn't continue this, she couldn't keep going along with something that she didn't understand. "What are you doing?" she demands.

"Just talking," Judy offers innocently. She adds, concerned, "I want to know how you are."

As much as she doesn't want to lose her family, and especially after how difficult this week had been, that was not an answer that Quinn could just blindly, happily accept. "And what if I was still kicked out? How would you find out how I was then? When you couldn't just sneak up here and ask me when your husband isn't around?" Quinn responds angrily. She feels tears sting her eyes as she continues, needing desperately to know, "If you care so much about how I'm doing then how could you just let me be left to do everything alone? How could you let him kick me out?"

Judy's lip wobbles as her own tears start spilling. "Quinny, honey, you have to understand," she tries as she reaches out for her daughter only to see her step out of her reach. She tries, desperately, to explain, "I don't have anything without your father. I can't disobey what he wants. I can't risk him leaving me. I don't have _anything _without him. I passed up college to follow him to his and I married him and I signed a prenup and I will have _nothing_ with out him. I'm fifty-one years old and I've never had a job. I wouldn't survive on my own and I certainly wouldn't be any good for you that way."

"So you couldn't make it on your own, but it's okay for me to be left to survive on my own?" Quinn's quick to point out.

"No, it's not okay," Judy acknowledges, but she rationalizes as she's been rationalizing to herself every day, "but you can handle it better than I ever could. You already have."

Quinn looks at her mother standing before her, trying to make her actions or lack of actions seem right. She doesn't understand how her mother could be like this. How either of her parents could be the people they are. "How can you do this? How can you just accept it so easily? How can you just let me go?" Quinn pleas.

It seemed so easy for her parents to abandon her. And here her mother was justifying letting her go and she didn't understand how she could do it. This was her _mother_. (Like she'll be a mother.) And how does someone just let that go? Even when it is what's right (though it isn't here), how does someone give caring for their own child up? (Especially after watching her grow and hearing her heartbeat and having her when she's had nothing else?)

"Quinny," Judy breaths, surprised that she was being asked to answer for her actions (her world didn't usually work like that). "It's not easy," she tells her honestly, "but there aren't any other choices."

"You do have other choices, you just won't make them," Quinn responds. Her mom could choose being there for her over sticking by her father's side, but she won't. Quinn knows that even if her mom continues to sneakily do things for her, that's the way things will be. Her mother will stay with her father despite the man he is and the things he does- just like she always has.

"No, I can't," Judy agrees. She adds truthfully (a bit of pride entering her watery voice), "I'm not as strong as you are."

"No, you're not," Quinn agrees regretfully. She understood that she needed to stop hoping for her mother to turn into someone she wasn't- the person Quinn needed. It still didn't make sense to her because this was her mother and she was her daughter and that should mean a lot more than it seemed to to her mom.

She didn't want to feel like this anymore- hurt and confused. She wanted to forget that she had been thinking about these things at all. She grabs her bag that she had dropped on the ground when she came in and starts to walk back out her door. She pauses in the doorway because her mother isn't the woman she wants/needs her to be, but she's still her mother and she's still been trying to offer her something. Quinn doesn't want that to be ruined just because they finally had an honest conversation. So she turns back to her mom and adds, "Maybe in time you'll get stronger. And about the leftovers you came to offer- I would like them. You can just move stuff around on my shelf and hide them in the back so dad doesn't see." She waits a second to see if her mom is going to say anything, but she just nods acceptingly (Judy was used to reverting back to niceties and pretending) so she adds politely, "Thank you."

Quinn walks out the door and out of the house heading anywhere but here.

-o-o-o-

Quinn ends up at the library as it had become one of her safe havens.

She sits at a table hidden in rows of an unpopular section of the library (gardening and plant science) and simply thinks for a while about what she should do. She has some of her schoolbooks in her car, but it was a Friday, nothing was due until Monday and she didn't have much work to do besides. She considers finding one of her favorite books and settling in with it for the next few hours, let the predictability of a frequently read book comfort her for a while. But she can't seem to find the will to get up and do that.

Questioning her mom- that was something she hadn't expected she'd do. She thought she had accepted everything concerning her parents. Hoped for at least a little change deep, deep inside of her, but accepted things as they currently were all the same.

(Buried in the back of her mind, the bottom of her heart, she knew that if it wasn't for Tuesday she never would have reacted to her mom the way she did. She knew from the second she found out she's pregnant that taking care of a baby isn't a very realistic option for her or the baby right now. Two adult parents made more sense for her. So she tried to tell herself that she had to prepare for that to be the end result of all of this- try not to get attached, don't imagine a future where she has a daughter, don't talk to her like she's there even though she is. And she did do all of those things- most of the time- but seeing her daughter again, hearing her heartbeat flooded her heart with emotion, with love.

What is she supposed to do now? Was she supposed to give up her daughter like her parents abandoned her? It still made sense that that would be a good decision for her daughter, but it _felt_ a whole lot less like a good decision.

Everything just kept getting harder, and it was never easy to begin with.)

Eventually, Quinn gets up and forces herself to walk around and browse before she gets too caught up thinking about things that she really didn't want to think about. Coming across the computers, she figures maybe she'll just look up recipes for common Hanukah desserts. She had been meaning to do it anyway since she wanted to contribute to at least one meal in the eight nights she ate with the Puckerman's.

When she searches through the few rows of computers for one far away from the scattered people on them, she's surprised to stumble across Puck on one of them. She pauses for half a second when she sees him, unsure if she's going to turn and walk away before he notices her or stay.

He hadn't been too focused on what he was doing there and catches sight of a person in his peripheral vision. Before she can make a decision about what she's going to do, he glances her direction and says, "Hi."

"Hi," she greets. Hoping that he didn't catch on to the fact that she was very briefly considering running the other way before he noticed her, she acts confused as she takes a seat at the empty computer next to him, "Really unexpected seeing you in a library."

"Taking that as a compliment," he responds with a smirk in her direction. "What are you doing here though?" he asks. He jokes, "I mean, I know you're nerdy enough to like spending time in a library, but it is a Friday."

"Didn't feel like being home," she answers honestly, quickly. She moves on so he doesn't ask her about it and questions, "What are you doing here?" She glances at his screen and asks, brows furrowed, "Shopping online?"

"Looking up gift recommendations trying to figure out something to get my mom and Kelyn," he explains why there's currently very girly things on the page he's on. "I was here anyway," he continues, "I had to come get another copy of _Death of a Salesman_ for English class- I left mine at school and I need it for some homework this weekend. And since Kel was already on our computer and she searches the history to see what I look at, I figured I might as well use a computer while I'm here since I don't have much longer to find them gifts."

Gifts. That was something Quinn had been wondering about. She should probably get them all a gift. So what could she get that won't cost her a lot of money and what would each of them like? Answering that added yet another thing she needed to worry about to her ever increasing list.

"What are you looking up?" Puck asks, squinting at her search results trying to figure it out.

"Hanukah dessert recipes," she answers, "I wanted to bring something at least one night."

"You don't have to worry about it being a Hanukah thing. All of us generally like any dessert," he responds. He doesn't know if mentioning the past is a good thing, but he takes a small chance offering, "Like if you were to make a pie like the one you did at Foster's, I'm sure that'd be cool with everyone."

She finds herself smiling a little (like she always did when she found out he remembered them), but she doesn't know how to respond to that. If she tells him the truth- which is that she does want to stick to a Hanukah recipe because it felt like it was important to his mom- it feels a little like blowing off his memory of their past and she doesn't want to do that. So instead she moves on from it asking, "So what are you thinking of getting Kelyn? She'd probably really like a Justin Beiber poster."

"No way I'm getting her anything like that," Puck says vehemently. He scans the page he's on again ('s recommendations for girls his sister's age) and comments, "These suggestions really don't seem like Kelyn though either so I have no idea what I'm going to end up with. Though Kel does always like cash so I do have that as a last resort."

"Money isn't a fun gift for a ten year old," Quinn considers.

"Kel likes it," he defends. The kid was always trying to take money from his wallet or his mom's so obviously she liked cash. Actually maybe he should just give up on getting her anything else now.

Well, Quinn couldn't exactly argue with that. Puck did know his sister. Still, Quinn didn't think it'd be the most fun gift for a ten year old to get and added looking into something else for Puck to get her to her list of things she needed to do.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, both consumed by their own research. Or at least one of them was, the other was trying to work up the courage to take the chance he had been trying to take since Tuesday. Puck doesn't want to mess everything up, he doesn't want to lose her again, but he's smart enough to know that ignoring things probably isn't a smart move either. So he tells himself to stop over thinking, stop worrying, and act on impulse (even though doing so has always seemed to get him into trouble in the past). He blurts, softly, sincerely, "Are you okay?"

The sudden serious concern surprises her, draws her attention away from her computer's screen and to his eyes. She doesn't know how to respond to that question. It's too complicated.

Having her just look at him with an expression he's not sure he's reading right makes him think that this was possibly yet another bad move so he tries to make it better (hopefully) by explaining. He offers, "Something doesn't seem right. Less right than usual. I mean- since Tuesday, it's like everything is kind of weird again and I know you said you were just tired but…"

"It's been a hard week," she offers honestly. She doesn't want to get into everything, because she's already worrying about everything enough. So she continues, "With the doctor's appointment and some stuff at home and… everything was just a little harder this week." She tries to smile reassuringly, though one barely forms on her face.

That was vague and not so forthcoming. He supposed that meant that she didn't want to talk about it (or talk about it with _him_- he feared). But he couldn't just give up that easy, not now. He swivels his chair around a tad so he's fully facing her and grabs her chair and turns it to face him. He tells her with certainty, "Everything is going to be okay."

"You can't know that," she returns because even if she needed to hear that from him (and it makes her chest ache that he knew to say it), lately, everything has shown her that everything will definitely not be okay- no matter what happens.

"No," he agrees, "I don't know that it will just happen. But I promise I'm going to make sure it will." He holds her eyes and hopes she knows that he means it. He's not going to let all this turn out badly (whatever badly comes to mean), he can't let it turn out badly, it means way too much to him.

She could say the same thing to him again. She could say that he can't make promises like that either. (No matter how this ends now, there just doesn't seem to be any good in it.) But she searches his eyes and God does she _want_ to believe him. (She wants to believe him about everything.) So she nods her head, trying to make his words let her feel better like she knew they were intended to.

He's not sure she really believes him. He gets that though, they have a lot ahead of them and he doesn't exactly have the best track record of coming through. He's going to prove he's right though, he knows he will and he's not worried about that. He is, however, worried about her getting some help at the moment because it seems like she still has a lot of weight on her shoulders. If she's not willing to put some of it on his right now, well, then she should have someone else. Back to the current topic though, he asks already knowing the answer she'll give, "Better?"

"Yeah," she says, pulling off a bit of a smile for real this time (because the fact that he cared did make her smile), "better."

He tries to be casual about it (and knows he's probably failing) as he mentions, "You know, you don't need to worry about dessert as much as you should be worrying about Addie. Talked to her the other day and she said she hadn't heard from you in forever and that she wasn't okay with that. She's probably going to end up hunting you down at your house if you don't show up and visit her soon."

Right. Addie. She had been avoiding going there. She thought she wanted to at first. Then she realized all of the differences between them and she suddenly felt like it was the last place she wanted to go (well, not the last, but certainly not one she wanted to be at either). She couldn't have Addie just dropping by her parent's house though if what Puck said was true. Plus she did feel awful about avoiding Addie when the woman had done nothing to her, when she was doing it out of her own shame. The woman had lost her husband though and she knew she should probably put her first instead of thinking about her own level of comfort. "I guess I should stop by," she concedes.

"She's there tonight- mentioned something about fixing up the kitchen," Puck offers.

She couldn't avoid this forever and really it was probably going to end up being easier than a lot of other things from this past week. And she had decided that she and Puck should remain un-romantic so staying here with him wasn't a good idea anyway. Not that anything would happen in the library as they did separate web searches on computers next to each other, but still, she should probably leave for good measure. (And because when his hand had been on her chair when he turned it, she had grabbed it, holding on during the sudden movement and even though they weren't touching anymore she could still sense the feel of his skin beneath her finger tips.) "I should probably go then. I wouldn't want to miss her," Quinn says as she starts closing the tabs on the window she had open on her computer.

"Nope," he agrees. He has to work hard not to smile. Sure she may be leaving him technically, but she's also doing exactly what he wanted her to do (without knowing it). He was Pucktacular- king of getting ladies to do what he wanted. (Okay, maybe it was a stretch, but no one could deny that he was finally starting to get good at being this whole thoughtful, responsible guy.) After she puts on her coat and stands up slinging her bag over her shoulder he adds, "See you Sunday night."

She smiles, raises an eyebrow, and adds knowingly, "Don't you mean you're going to call me later with the excuse of wanting to see how seeing Addie went?"

She knew that he made up excuses to call her? He panicked for a second before he realized that despite apparently knowing his intentions, she still answered all of his calls and still talked to him. He took that as a very good sign. So he shrugs and offers honestly, "Of course. Why would I do anything else?" (He wanted to say "Why would I want to do anything else with my night other than talk to you?" because that was his truth now. But he knew how she felt about _them _right now and he didn't want to scare her away.)

She glances at the ground, her smile widening. Reigning the smile in she looks back up at him and tells him, "I'll talk to you later then."

"Yeah," he agrees with a smile of his own.

(Here's something you should know: It takes him three minutes to remember what he was doing and she has to stand outside the library's entrance for two minutes before remembering what direction she parked in. She writes it off as having been stuck in her head when she parked thanks to her conversation with her mom. He knows better now than to attribute his lapse to anything other than simply having been caught up in her.)

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**A/N: I hope you enjoyed the chapter! **

**Next chapter title:** _I wish Hanukah was my whole year_ from "It's Chanukah Time" by Julie Silver. This title may change though. I'm not sure it's absolutely the best selection. I really wanted something from a Hanukah song, but selections, especially even slightly appropriate ones for the chapter, are very slim. So I'm still searching for something more apt and if you know of anything I would definitely appreciate the help.

**Thanks for reading and ****PLEASE REVIEW!****  
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**And to anyone currently celebrating it, Happy Hanukah! **


	16. Chapter 14

**A/N: First, thank you so much to all of you wonderful people who reviewed!**

**Second, I'm so sorry for how long it took me to update. **If you've been on my profile recently then you know that in addition to the holidays consuming a lot of my time this year as they do every year, I've also been having some major computer problems. They're fixed (fingers crossed), mostly, so hopefully that won't be delaying any future chapters. Again, I'm so sorry. On the plus side this chapter is super long – so long I was strongly leaning towards posting it in two parts, but didn't because trying to decide on a breaking point was taking me forever. It's 80 pages and when you're done with it, assuming you've read the entire story so far, you'll have read 630 single spaced word document pages (and to think I thought this story would only be about 300 long, I'm so bad at estimation).

I'm going to let you get to reading, because, as mentioned, it's a long chapter but one more thing very quickly…I saw a video recently that was made for another show and pairing I like and I know that this pairing has lots of great videos out there, but it made me wish I knew how to make one of those videos or fanart/picspam so I could make one for this story. Since I'm rather technologically challenged though, I thought I'd propose the idea to all you fantastic, talented readers. And to make things more interesting, I thought it could be a contest (with a reward). If you're interested in the multiple possible ways to participate in this idea, check my profile for details.

Lastly, I'd like to dedicate this chapter to Amanda0310. She has been very kindly nagging me about this chapter/ keeping me constantly reminded that it's worth all the time it takes because there are people who really want to read it, providing me with computer tips when I mentioned my troubles, and just keeping my spirits up in general about actually being able to finish the chapter despite the busyness that kept me away from writing and the frustrating computer problems. So thank you Amanda, this chapter is for you:) Good luck on your impending trip!

Again, sorry for the delay and I hope you enjoy the massive chapter full of Hanukah ahead.

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**Cheated Hearts

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**

_XIV. I wish Hanukah was my whole year_

(Here's something you should know: Even though he's never been much for praying, Puck prays that Hanukah goes really well. He wants this to be the first of many Hanukah's spent with Quinn. Though he'd be lying if he said that the idea of being a dad by next Hanukah wasn't thoroughly freaking him out.

Addie has wiped the table off in the kitchen seven times now.

Twenty minutes ago Puck had called and said that Quinn was on her way so she came over to the bar to wait. Since he mentioned that he had told Quinn that she'd be there because she had something to do in the kitchen, Addie figured she should actually be doing something in the kitchen when Quinn got here. Only it was starting to seem like Quinn wasn't going to get here.

Actually Quinn was already there and had been for two minutes now. She just hadn't made it out of her car. She knew why she was hesitant, it was the same thing that had kept her away all this time. She knew that she probably shouldn't let it stop her though, that if she'd just go inside everything would be okay. Everything would probably be better than it was now because Addie would make things better. But despite knowing that, she sat, frozen in her car.

Addie had tired of waiting and left the kitchen. She caught sight of something reflecting the sign over the bar through the window and realized that a car had to be here. She didn't know why Quinn wouldn't come to her and she didn't know why she'd sit out there and not come in, but she wasn't going to stand for it any longer. She marches to the door and waves at Quinn and stays in the doorway- a sign that she's not going to Quinn's car, she's going to wait for her to come inside.

Quinn can't hesitate any longer, not with Addie knowing she's there and waiting on her. She gets out and walks with her head slightly bowed, avoiding the older woman's eyes.

Addie moves aside so Quinn can join her inside, shuts the door behind the younger girl. She pulls Quinn into a hug (which she assumes surprises Quinn since she hadn't really looked at her since she got here) and tells her, "It's so good to see you honey."

"You too," Quinn says genuinely as she returns the embrace. She's glad for the hug. After this week, she really needed one. The problem is what she knows will come when it ends. After Addie pulls away, Quinn (still avoiding Addie's eyes) states, "I guess you know everything that's been…keeping me busy."

"I do," Addie confirms. She reaches forward and nudges Quinn's chin up gently so that the girl is actually looking at her now as she says, "Which is why I don't understand why you wouldn't come here. You know I've been through the same thing. I can help."

"But it's not the same thing," Quinn responds. She had thought about this a lot ever since seeing Addie became a possible reality and she knew that she had very little in common with Addie.

Addie didn't understand that. It seemed like Quinn was in a similar situation. She was pregnant. Unfortunately she was also kicked out of her parents house (though temporarily living there again from what Puck had told her) while she had had her mother's support during her pregnancy. But still, despite that difference, she could have sworn they were similar. She wants to understand what Quinn's thinking though, why she stayed away, so she offers, "Well, okay, if you think so you can explain that to me. You wanna come on back to the kitchen with me and we can get started making some dinner for us?"

Right. It was evening now technically and she would have to eat at some point. "Sure," she agrees. She follows Addie into the kitchen, leaving her coat and bag on a stool at the bar, and watches as Addie pulls a bunch of food out of the fridge.

After she's done digging things out of the refrigerator, Addie begins sorting them out on the table that Quinn's on the other side of. "Don't worry. I made sure I had stuff that'd be good for you and the baby just in case you stopped by. No abundance of fried food like before," Addie comments as she puts some fish in the microwave to defrost. As she begins sorting the vegetables she had taken out, Addie asks, "So why is it you didn't want to come here? What makes you think we're different?"

"Everything," Quinn answers honestly. "You got pregnant by a guy you knew you wanted to marry, who you did marry. You didn't just have a baby, you created a family. I just…made a mistake and now I'm going to have a baby and…I don't know what's going to come after that. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be a happy family like you had though."

"I got lucky," Addie explains, "I decided to have sex with my boyfriend who I thought was the love of my life. But I was fifteen. I was naïve and kind of stupid honestly. I didn't know that everything would work out and it very well might not have. So just because you think things won't work out as well for you doesn't mean they're not going to. Life changes. You can't know how things are going to turn out."

Addie hands Quinn some carrots to start chopping and she can see that the younger girl doesn't seem to believe her. She sighs and adds, "And don't you go thinking you ended up pregnant for any rare or shameful reason. Do you know how many kids are the result of two people having sex just because they wanted to? At least half of them probably. All of my kids certainly were. We didn't plan a single one of them. Well, after my second son we did decide that we wanted to try for a girl eventually, but certainly not as soon as she came along. My second son and my daughter are only seventeen months apart- I felt like I spent two consecutive years pregnant." Just to make sure her point has gotten across Addie looks up from her chopping and tells Quinn sternly, "I don't want to hear you referring to getting pregnant as some shameful mistake again. Far too many people have done the same exact thing for that to be an accurate way to feel. Okay?"

Quinn wasn't sure she agreed. It was hard not to think of a lot of her actions this year as mistakes. But it was a nice thing for Addie to say and it made her feel better so she smiles a little and concedes, "Okay."

Addie smiles in return and gets back to her task. She explains what they're making and gives Quinn a new task as she takes on one of her own. She asks Quinn about the diet she's been keeping lately and they spend a dozen minutes talking from there about less serious things. Then they spend a few minutes working in silence. They have plenty more time together so Addie decides that they don't have to tackle everything that kept Quinn away, everything they clearly needed to talk about, right this minute.

As they make dinner and then eat it out on stools at the bar (Quinn purposely heading there and avoiding her formerly regular booth- not ready to face the memories it held), Addie gets caught up on the changes in Quinn's life. She learns about how school has been going, the changes she's made for her next term so she has more of a chance at college, the changes she's made to have a way to take care of herself after she has to leave her parents home forever, and her new extra curricular of glee club.

It didn't go unnoticed to Addie how Quinn didn't mention the baby except in the sense that she's responsible for it now and how she's found ways to be financially responsible for it at the moment. She didn't talk about the baby like it would be a part of her future at all. Actually, beyond the school changes and the money she had gotten to live off of, Quinn didn't really mention the future. Taking all of that into account, Addie feels she can't let things not yet talked about remain that way any longer. She divulges, playing with the stem on her wine glass, "I considered leaving Foster once. Well quite a few times over the course of our marriage actually, but once while I was pregnant with our first child." She sees the surprise on Quinn's face and explains as she recalls, "I was seven months along and I had been working part time and trying to get my GED the rest of the time so I could be done with it by the time the baby was born and then hopefully get a better job. Foster was supposed to be working too but then I found out that for this whole week where I thought he had been working really late trying extra hard to support us he'd actually been knocking off work early with the rest of the guys he worked with and had been hanging out in bars every night. I was so mad…and hurt. Here I was no longer in high school, I didn't have any friends anymore because they got to be fun, free teenagers and I was tied down with a life, I wasn't going to get any more homecomings or to go to the prom or to graduate like everyone else. And I was getting fat. I was doing all of that and he was being…immature. He was living his life like nothing had changed when _everything_ had changed. So I thought about leaving. I thought about ending our marriage and giving our son up for adoption when I had him and returning to my carefree life like he had never left his. Of course I loved our baby already. He was me and Foster all in one little person that I had spent the last seven months with. But I didn't like the life I had been trying to create then and I didn't want him to have to be a part of it." She reaches over and takes Quinn's hand in hers as she tells her honestly, "Just because I got married as soon as I got pregnant and I was with Foster didn't make being pregnant and a teenager any easier. I was still confused, I was still uncertain. The situation is too difficult to be solved simply by who's there for you and who's not."

Quinn understands the purpose of the story. Having Addie's situation instead of hers didn't make the ultimate decision in all of this any easier. "I don't know what to do," she admits, terrified that it's her truth. And though she understands what Addie's saying and what she's trying to do here, she knows that they are different despite Addie's points. "My circumstances are different than yours. Maybe I'd still be confused if I was in your shoes instead of mine, but my options would be different. They wouldn't be so…hopeless. You had the possibility of a happy ending and you got it. I don't have that. I have two options and both of them have too many faults to keep track of."

Addie sighs. She knows Quinn has a point. She wishes she didn't and since she knows Puck's intentions she believes that Quinn has better options than she knows of. But she can't be the one to explain that, that's something she needed to learn with Puck. For now, she just needs to make sure Quinn doesn't write anything off, doesn't lose hope. "You know how I got my happy ending?" she asks, "I yelled at Foster over what he had been doing. I didn't tell him what I had been considering, but I guess he figured that he'd pissed me off enough for me to leave anyway. He restored my faith in him. It wasn't any big gesture. He just… changed, stepped up. He came home from work on time, he put me and the baby first, talked about all the things we'd do as a family, and always let me know how he felt about me so I never had to doubt it again. He made thoughts of leaving and going back to my old life fade." She smiles at the memories from a lifetime ago. She meets Quinn's eyes and promises, "Everything changes. Everything can be changed in a month and you have a lot of your pregnancy left to go. It's very likely your options will change by the time it's over. I think you should take some time-"

"I can't keep ignoring what I'm going to do. I've been doing that for weeks and it's just making me more unsure of everything," Quinn interjects urgently. As much as deciding what to do is going hurt, not knowing what's going to happen is torture. She needs to acknowledge the situation and start looking into her options and maybe, maybe it wouldn't feel so much like she's doomed no matter what decision she makes.

"I don't want you to ignore it," Addie corrects, "I think you should accept that this isn't the time for a decision. Just…take a break. Enjoy the holidays and maybe after them it'll be time to start considering your options." She can see that she hasn't convinced Quinn she's right, so Addie adds, "There's a reason it seems so hard right now. Your situation just changed again. Your options just changed again. You need time to settle into them and then, I promise, finding your way will be easier. This will be one of the biggest and most important decisions you ever make, you should take your time with it. And when it is time to start considering what your options really turn out to be I'll be here to help you through it. Anything you need."

"Thank you," Quinn says sincerely grateful for Addie's offer to help and advice. "You're right. Things do keep changing on me. I should wait to decide anything," Quinn concedes, but not because she's convinced it's true. She knows Addie has a point, but if she just knew what she was going to do maybe a day like Tuesday wouldn't have been so hard. She agreed though because Addie was just trying to help and accepting it seemed like the right thing to do.

Addie also offers Quinn a place to stay- now or whenever and for how ever long she wanted. She was all alone now anyway and could use the company, she assures Quinn. Quinn thanks her for this offer and everything else. They talk some more- this time about what's going on in Addie's life instead of Quinn's- and eventually Addie hugs her goodbye and Quinn goes home.

Quinn feels better…sort of. She felt stupid for not going to see Addie sooner. She knew Addie made a lot of valid points, but she hadn't been feeling very logical lately. Like she knew she wasn't the only girl (teenaged or older) to get pregnant without planning on it, but when people looked at her and knew that she's just a teenager and pregnant, she can't seem to help the shame she feels. And she can't help the guilt over the situation she's gotten her daughter in where her only options seem to be to do something that would be good for her little girl but that she's not sure she'll get through or to do something that quite possibly won't be good for either one of them. She wishes she had lived her life better so that they didn't seem condemned either way.

Saturday morning Quinn's awoken by her phone ringing. It's a manager at Macy's and he asks her to come in for an interview that afternoon. She goes and she gets lucky and gets a job in their gift-wrap department through the end of the year. This is in large part thanks to how often she emphasized she'd be available to work (they only had a week an a half of school before break), which the manager was pleased with because then they wouldn't have to hire as many people. She gets to start tomorrow morning and she realizes after she tells Puck all of this news over his usual called-with-an-excuse-and-talked-for-a-while phone call that Addie was right. Her life did seem to keep changing and maybe that would effect what her options would be. So she decides to take Addie's advice completely, throw herself into school and work and the holidays, and reevaluate what she can do about the baby later.

-o-o-o-

Quinn's Sunday was very long.

It started early with going to Macy's, going through an hour of training, working for five hours, and ending her shift by getting her schedule for the whole month she was going to work there. She didn't have much time this up coming week (she had mentioned her full day of school those days), just a couple of hours after school on Tuesday and Wednesday (and she'd get off early enough to make it to the Puckerman's just a little late). She'll get to work about half a day almost every day _through_ Christmas Eve. She's also working half a day the day after Christmas. That was quite unfortunate since she supposes it cancels her plan of driving to Reading to see her sister. Money was really important though and she couldn't give this opportunity up just because she wanted to see her sister so badly.

Next in her day came hastily deciding to make Rugelach and hoping that it was indeed a Hanukah dessert because that wasn't clear by the site she found it on. As she's making it, she notices her mom come through the kitchen- though not for any apparent purpose- and look at what she's doing curiously. She offers before her mom can casually saunter out like she hadn't been doing anything, "I'm going to be out tonight and for the next seven nights so you don't have to worry about being out of here by my time in the kitchen- I won't need it."

"Thank you for letting me know," Judy responds politely. She heads for the door, pausing as she adds, "Enjoy Hanukah."

Quinn looks up in surprise because her mother's words had been genuine not judgmental as she'd expect (even if her whole Christian beliefs were just part of an act), but her mom has already left.

Finally, at five thirty she shows up exactly on time at the Puckerman apartment.

Puck opens the door before she's even stopped knocking. "Hi," he greets.

"Hi," she returns entering the apartment.

He takes the Tupperware container from her so she can take off her coat. He peaks inside and comments, "Rugelach, nice." Before she can say anything in return he leans in and whispers, "I really should have told you my mom's never on time for anything. It's going to be like two hours before we eat- sorry. I should have told you so you didn't have to rush over here after your first day at work."

"It's fine. I didn't have to rush. I had time. And I'm already done with my homework so I don't really have anything else to do," she assures quickly with a small smile hoping that it will placate him and he'll stop leaning in because she doesn't completely trust herself that close to him.

He does back off and calls, "Ma' Quinn's here."

"What have I told you about yelling in the house?" she calls back.

He rolls his eyes and heads for the kitchen. Quinn follows and he returns to his mom, "Never learned that rule since you're always breaking it yourself."

"I do not," May denies to her son. To Quinn she adds, "Hi honey." She wipes her hands off (she had been peeling potatoes) and hugs Quinn quickly before return to her task. She asks, "Where's Kelyn at? She's supposed to be helping me." Before Puck could have responded, May loudly calls, "Kelyn."

"See," Puck says quietly to Quinn justifying his argument that he was right about his mom even if May clearly didn't realize it.

Quinn just smiles and offers May, "I can help."

"Oh it's okay," May declines, "I don't actually need help- not tonight at least. Kel just said she wanted to learn how to make latkes but she hasn't been in here for over an hour so I don't know how she expects to learn." She glances around and sees that one, Kelyn isn't coming and two, her son and Quinn are just standing there in the kitchen. "Well dinner will be in about an hour. You two go find something to do. And Noah, warn Kel that in another twenty minutes I'll be pretty much done with the latkes without her."

"Fine," Puck agrees and turns around and heads for his sister's room, gesturing for Quinn to come along.

Quinn follows and she's startled as Puck suddenly stops in the hallway and groans.

"She's listening to Beiber again," he explains.

He looks so tortured and disappointed (and kind of adorable) that she finds herself smiling and offering, "Do you want me to talk to her for you so you can head away from the music?"

He seems to consider it for a second before he surprises her by saying seeming genuinely concerned, "No. You should get out of here though. The baby shouldn't be hearing that. I'm sure it's bad for her development or something."

Okay, he wasn't just being _sort of_ adorable any more. It wasn't exactly the smartest of ideas, but it was sweet and Quinn couldn't argue with it. She smiles as she responds, "You're probably right. I'll wait in the living room. Let Kelyn know I'm here and I'd like to see her if she'd turn off the music."

He seems genuinely relieved that she agreed and he says, "Will do."

It's only a minute later when Puck is joining Quinn on the couch (after she's heard an exchange of "Turn that crap off" and "You can't tell me what to listen to"). He sits next to her on the couch with a heavy sigh. "She probably won't be out soon," he says about his sister.

Rather than dwelling on how obstinate his sister could be (and how she probably got that from him) and rather than sitting in an awkward silence, Puck asks, "So how'd your first day of work go?"

"Good. There were only two other people in gift wrap, they were nice and the manager is nice enough too," she responds. Glancing at her hands she adds, "Though I did manage to get four paper cuts."

"What?" he says disbelievingly and grabbing her hands in his and examining them without a second thought. He runs a thumb over one that was on her index finger and comments, "That's not good. You should wear gloves or something."

They're practically holding hands and that's not good for her ability to think or breathe or act responsibly. She finds her voice (luckily after only a few seconds) and responds, "With more practice I'm sure I'll be able to avoid that in the future."

Quinn's grateful when, a couple of seconds later (while Puck has yet to release her hands and she hasn't found a voice to ask), May hollers, "Kelyn get your tuchas in here." Followed by, "Noah, what happened to you getting Kelyn?"

At the sound of May's voice Quinn's hands were quickly released from Puck's and he yells back, "I told her you wanted her in the kitchen. She doesn't seem to care."

"What did I tell you about yelling?" May reminds.

"You just did it twice," Puck retorts, increasingly frustrated (they had this debate often).

"So? I told _you _not to. Just because I yell doesn't mean you have to yell back. What are you doing that's so important? You can get up and come here and respond. I've got a brisket in the oven to keep an eye on not to mention other food to prepare- I can't go anywhere," May argues back.

Puck gets up and huffs off to the kitchen where Quinn can hear him sarcastically tell May everything he already yelled plus a little more about Kelyn stubbornly staying in her room to do God knows what.

Quinn had been spending time with other people's families lately and though they had all been different, she thinks that Puck's family may be the most different of all. Not that that was a bad thing. They had their issues (she knew that from last spring), and they got frustrated with each other apparently often, but they still had the one thing it never felt like her family had: they cared about each other very much.

Eventually, Puck comes back and they end up watching TV for twenty minutes before Kelyn finally joins them. She answers vaguely when May asks Kelyn what kept her hold up in her room alone for so long, something that makes everyone worry about what she could have been doing/planning.

Once May is done cooking she declares that they're going to light the menorah before they eat.

It's then that Quinn notices that they have a menorah set up in the window on the far right side of the living room. She follows Puck and Kelyn over there, taking her cues from them and unsure of what she should do. She knew technically she came to celebrate a Jewish holiday, but she wasn't sure she felt comfortable with the idea of actually taking part in a religious act from another faith.

May says a bunch of stuff in what Quinn assumes to be Hebrew as she lights the shorter candle in the middle and the one to its right. Then it's apparently over because after a quick "Amen" from Kelyn and Puck and May everyone turns and heads to the kitchen.

Quinn follows and easily finds her place at the small table- with only four chairs around it and Kelyn and Puck already in theirs as May added one dish to the table while pulling out her own chair. She can't help but notice how different it is from her parent's house. There they had a large table that kept them spread out from each other in a formal dinning room decorated with expensive family antiques. Here the table was so small the food barely fit on it, everyone was literally so close to each other that they were within reach, and they ate in the kitchen that still richly smelled like the food just made in it.

As everyone simply digs in and passes dishes around the table, Quinn asks curiously, "So did what you said have to do with the history of Hanukah or was it just a traditional…prayer or something?"

"It was three prayers actually. There was a blessing over the candles, a blessing for Hanukah, and Shehecheyanu, which is only said on the first night," May answers. She knows Quinn's not Jewish and never will be (probably) so she didn't want to make their time together about Judaism even if today was the start of a Jewish holiday. Today and the next seven nights was just supposed to be about spending time together as a family- letting a girl who lost a family due to a situation her son helped her get into know that she could be a part of another family. But since Quinn was the one to bring up the religious aspect of the holiday, May asks, "Do you know the history of the holiday?"

"Yes. I was curious so I looked it up," Quinn answers.

"Well at least one other person here knows it," May responds glancing pointedly at each of her kids on either side of her.

"I know it," Puck responds to the accusation. He offer, clearly unsure, "It's got to do with oil and a temple…or something."

"I always forget," Kelyn admits, "it's too boring to remember."

May tells Quinn across from her, "Now you see why this isn't a very religious holiday for us. I can't get these two to know much about their faith."

"I found the origin of the holiday fascinating," Quinn comments honestly.

"Kiss-ass," Puck coughs only semi-discretely making Kelyn laugh.

Quinn pointedly ignores him as she continues telling May, "I also liked idea of the meaning behind the word Hanukah is derived from."

"Rededication?" Puck guesses, surprising everyone at the table as their heads all turn to him.

"You know that?" May asks surprised, she had been long resigned to the fact that her son only seemed dedicated to their faith when she wanted him to be and even then it wasn't to the true ideas behind their religion but more in him embracing the group their faith made them a part of.

"Yeah," he answers as if this shouldn't come as any shock at all, "you're the one that made me learn Hebrew."

"Didn't know any of it stuck," May remarks.

Puck just shrugs, notices his sister, and asks, "Why did I have to learn and Kel doesn't though?"

"She's taking classes next year. I already signed her up," May answers, not at all oblivious to the dirty look her daughter is giving her son across the table and his smart-ass smirk.

The rest of dinner is pleasant as May warns how they won't be eating like this over the next few days as she won't have time to cook every night after she gets home from work. Kelyn spends a bit trying to convince May to let her have a sleepover over winter break, which May only has one condition for letting that happen- Kelyn has to clean her room (it's a condition Kel doesn't like). They also somehow end up talking about the lack of decorations in the apartment for the holiday, which May explains is because no one really sells a lot of Hanukah decorations. Despite the fact that she doesn't have much free time this week (with her new job and semester finals coming up), Quinn offers that making decorations sounds like a fun craft project and she could bring some stuff over some night. May and Kelyn both like the idea while Puck declares that he won't be forced into doing any kind of girly-crafts.

After dinner, Puck and Kelyn teach Quinn how to play dreidel while May cleans up the kitchen (commenting about how the one Jewish thing her kids do is play a game). Naturally, given the manners her mother required of her, Quinn offers to help May but May insists Quinn play the game. However, Quinn finds she lost the game that she didn't completely follow (Kelyn and Puck were lax in explaining the symbols on the dreidel and just kept telling her what to do) and she's back in the kitchen with May.

"You lost?" May asks from the sink, hands scrubbing away at a roasting pan, when she sees Quinn enter the kitchen.

"Apparently," Quinn says. She admits, "They kind of ran through what things meant quickly, I'm not sure I really followed it."

"Well if they used the Yiddish terms with it it's understandable how you wouldn't learn it too quickly. New words and the rules of the game just makes more to learn," May offers understandingly.

"I usually do good with new languages though," Quinn comments wondering if not learning the terms they used immediately (as she frequently easily picked up other languages' vocabularies) was a result of "pregnancy brain"- something she had been reading about where being pregnant altered some women's ability for their brain to work in the same way it usually did. She read about women who normally had great memories, but couldn't remember a frequently dialed phone number while they were pregnant and women who couldn't concentrate on anything for longer than a few minutes while they were pregnant. God, she really hoped that wasn't setting in.

"That's right," May recalls, "I remember you saying about all the language classes you've taken." She finishes rinsing her last dish, dries her hands, and asks hopefully, "Well since you like learning and you're good with languages, would you want to learn a little Yiddish?"

Maybe all the times he's called her a nerd or geek Puck has been right, Quinn thinks, because learning bits of another language sounds like fun to her. "Absolutely," she accepts.

May starts off with some words and phrases. She tells Quinn she's a shiksa- a non-Jewish female. She explains that when Noah would get in fights at school he was being a shmegegge- an idiot. And she teaches her phrases like, "S'iz geven a fargenign aykh tsu zen," which means, "It was a pleasure seeing you." May also translates the prayers she said earlier to English and teaches Quinn the words from them as well.

It starts to get late and Quinn knows that when May starts pestering Kelyn to get ready for bed it's probably time she be on her way home. She hugs Kelyn and May goodbye and Puck walks her out to her car, leaving each other with a simple "see you tomorrow."

When Puck gets back upstairs he finds his mom settling into her recliner with the newspaper. He takes a seat on the couch, figuring he'd ignore that last bit of homework he should be doing just a few minutes longer because he knew ER was on right now.

He gets to watch only about two minutes of ER before his mom comments, "It was nice having Quinn here."

"Yep," he agrees shortly. He knows what his mom is trying to do and he's not falling for it.

Eventually, predictably, she sighs and says, "That's all you've got to say about it? We could have been starting a new tradition tonight, having her here, and you've got nothing you want to add?"

"Nope," he says as he turns off the TV and heads to his room to avoid any more questions. It's not that he doesn't want to talk to his mom. He's been sharing a lot with her lately and he knows he's benefitted from it. But he didn't want to talk about or think about whether they were starting a tradition tonight with Quinn being with them for Hanukah because he really didn't know if this would be a tradition or a one time thing. He feared that if he thought about much, he'd find something to show him that this was just something that would happen this year. So he tried to not to think about anything at all to avoid any possibly unpleasant realizations.

Meanwhile, Quinn got home to an already dark house. She knew she enjoyed the night with the Puckerman's. She had enjoyed all of her time spent with other families lately, but she knew that she was particularly looking forward to returning to this one (and she told herself that that had nothing to do with Puck specifically but with the overall combination of people).

What she really thought about as she tried to fall asleep was the prayers that May had explained to her. She had prayed a lot herself lately, but it had been a long time since she had been to church. The "Blessed are you, Lord, our God," parts of the prayers reminded her of prayers said in mass. She missed going to church (when she thought about what it used to be like and not how it would most likely be now that she'd be going as a pregnant teenager). The cross around her neck had never been for show, even if lately it hadn't felt like she had much faith in anything, God included. She knew that going back to church would probably help restore at least some of her faith, but just the idea of walking into a church with a baby-bump made her anxious. Tonight also reminded her that her own religious holiday was just around the corner though and she really didn't want to miss some kind of Christmas mass. Maybe she should finally talk to Artie about taking his family up on the invitation to join them at church. Maybe regaining her faith would be one of the things that would change her situation, her possibilities by next month.

-o-o-o-

Quinn takes it as a sign when Artie is the first person she sees Monday morning. So as they walk into school together she asks if it's still okay if she joined his family at church next week (hoping they go early enough so that it won't conflict with her new work schedule). Of course he's okay with it and he gives her the address so she can meet them there for the eight o'clock mass (which is awfully early for a Sunday, but it'll get her to work on time).

The rest of the day goes typical enough. People either whisper about her in the halls or run into her like she isn't even there. She tries not to let it get to her, but it takes distracting herself with all the things she needs to do/figure out to stop thinking about how people treat her now.

The one weird part of the school day is lunch- started by morning break. Lately Quinn had been spending morning break with Kurt, occasionally joined by Mercedes (though she was more frequently with Tina because they had the same class after break). Today though Kurt wasn't around even though she knew he was at school (in uniform). When Quinn joins Kurt, Mercedes, Artie, and Tina for lunch, she asks him where he spent his break.

He answers casually, "Sue called a meeting with me and 'Cedes. Don't worry, she's not trying to add us to her glee club spies. She just wanted to nitpick our appearances since we're Cheerio's now. No big. Just your typical Sylvester encounter."

No matter what happened in that meeting Quinn believes Kurt. She doesn't think he was affected by it at all. But she's been the one being scrutinized by Coach Sylvester and the signs of her methods working are easy for her to pick up. Mercedes carries on lively conversation throughout lunch, spends a lot of time laughing and joking, but she barely touches her lunch. Maybe it's nothing, maybe it's just coincidence that Quinn knows Sue said something about Mercedes' appearance (likely her choice to wear the uniform pants if Quinn knows Sue) and that Mercedes didn't eat today, but Quinn decides she's going to keep an eye on that. Most people aren't as familiar with what Coach Sylvester's terror can drive people to do, so even if she has a lot on her plate right now, Quinn feels like it's her duty to do this, to look out for people that could get hurt by Coach Sylvester.

After school Quinn goes home and grabs the purse she had taken with her the previous night. She had spent all day trying to think of what kind of Hanukah decorations they could make and had come up with some ideas. Now all she had to do was shop for supplies. When she gets to the craft store and opens her wallet for the first time all day, she finds extra money and a note. The note said, "For the crafts," and was paper-clipped to some money. May must have slipped it in there before she left yesterday. The crafts were Quinn's idea so (even though she hated spending any of her money on anything that wasn't absolutely necessary) she figured she should have to pay for them. But she's grateful that May didn't want her to, that she knew how important money was right now and she was sort of insisting to pay for the supplies instead. Still, Quinn figured it was her idea and splits the cost of all of the supplies between her own money and May's.

With bags of craft supplies she returns home to do homework until it's time to leave for the Puckerman's.

(Through it all, she tries to keep the future off her mind like Addie suggested. It's hard not to worry about what she's going to do, but when she manages it, she breathes a little easier.)

-o-o-o-

Puck's Monday was definitely different.

It started with his mom lecturing him and Kelyn about how if they expected good things to happen in their lives perhaps they should be performing more mitzvahs (good deeds).

Puck writes off what his mom said (he had enough to do, he didn't need to add good deeds to the list) until second period geometry with Kurt.

He doesn't know if they've always sat near each other, but they definitely have both been in the back of the room for a while. This morning, Kurt comes in, in a Cheerio's uniform (when did that happen?), and warns, "If you're going to make fun of my cheerleading uniform get it over with."

He has a few insults in mind, but Puck pauses and thinks for a second before diving into saying one of them. He's not friends with Kurt and he doesn't really care if he ever is. But Kurt has been one of the few people to be a friend to Quinn and Quinn likes him and it's not like the guy has ever done anything to him. Plus, maybe if he says something nice instead of something mean it could be like he's doing a good deed and maybe he'll get something in return (because if Kurt did like him, that could go over well with Quinn, right?). So he gives it some thought and responds, "Nah, I'm not going to make fun of you. It was actually a pretty smart move for you."

"How?" Kurt asks figuring he's probably playing into being set up despite what Puck said about not teasing him.

"Well if I was a gay dude looking to find the other gay guys at this school, I'd start with the male cheerleaders and now you'll get to hang out with them all the time since you're on the team," Puck explains. It wasn't that hard for him to find something nice to say about Kurt being a Cheerio once he thought about any straight guy's motivation for joining that team: to get to touch hot girls and constantly be surrounded by them under the guise of participating in the same "sport." Since the other guys on the team were definitely gay, the benefits of Kurt's situation were easy to see as far as Puck was concerned.

He hadn't really thought of it like that at all, but Kurt points out, "The other guys on the team aren't gay."

Puck chuckles and responds sarcastically, "Sure they aren't."

"I'm the only gay person at this school," Kurt insists because no matter what people thought, that was the truth he had encountered.

"You may be the only one that's out, but you're definitely not the only one that's gay," Puck points out casually. Actually, on the thought of other gay people at this school, he adds (he's totally kicking ass at this mitzvah thing), "There's been tons of people I've made fun of for being gay. I could make you list of the guys so you know who's just an opportunity away from coming out of the closet."

Kurt considers the offer. On the one hand, he's still in love with Finn. But on the other hand, even if he doubts Puck's ability to pick out closeted students, he'd really like to avoid falling for straight guys in the future. "That could be helpful," Kurt accepts, "I am tired of being single."

At the end of the period Puck hands Kurt a piece of paper and leaves class as quick as possible (trying to make an "accidental" run in with Quinn). Kurt doesn't have time to figure out what it is, let alone say thank you, before Puck is long gone. As he figures out that it's the list they started the period talking about (despite the fact that Puck probably should have been paying attention during class instead of making it), Kurt also realizes that Puck made notes on several people. Like Billy Johnson who he described as definitely closeted because "he never looks down a girl's shirt when he has the easy opportunity to," but he warns that Billy is "a total tool." It's actually pretty thoughtful, which Kurt wasn't expecting at all. Kurt had never understood what his new friend could have really seen in Puck, but he's definitely starting to get it now.

The rest of Puck's school day consists of casually running into Quinn, talking for a couple of minutes, and taking off like he actually has other things to do that he cares about.

When he heads out to his truck after school, needing to meet Hank soon as it was his first day of shadowing, he sees some of his former teammates putting some kid in the dumpster. He keeps walking. One mitzvah was enough for the day. And besides, he can't fight and risk getting kicked out of school and he needs to be somewhere extremely important anyway.

-o-o-o-

Quinn's surprised when, after knocking, she hears Puck yell "Come in," rather than anyone answering the door. She's confused by the fact that Puck was there (she figured he'd be working at least a little while longer) and that May isn't there. She isn't, however, surprised to find Puck and Kelyn in the living room in an intense game of Battleship. She also isn't surprised to figure out after a couple of minutes of watching them play that they're both cheating. (Though Puck is still clearly letting Kelyn win.)

As they cheat their way through their game, Kelyn greets distractedly, "Hi Quinn."

"Hi Kelyn," she returns.

"What'd you bring? Food?" Puck questions, glancing up and having seen the bags in her hands.

"No. Not food. Craft supplies to make Hanukah decorations," Quinn answers.

"Yay!" Kelyn exclaims, "Now I have something else to do instead of homework."

Puck catches what she's implied and questions Kelyn, "I thought you said you were done with your homework?"

Kelyn, obviously realizing her mistake, stays tight lipped, not even offering a coordinate though it's her turn.

Puck sighs and tells her, "We better finish this quick then and then you've got to do your homework." Somehow, Kelyn's next three guesses sink his battleship and she wins.

"Go get your homework," Puck orders as he puts the game away.

As Kelyn reluctantly runs off, Quinn adds to her, "If you bring it out here I'll help you with it."

She pauses, turns and asks, "Like before?"

"Yeah, like before," Quinn confirms knowing full well that there was a lot about now that did feel like before.

As she helps Kelyn with her homework, Puck spends a while complaining about how late their mom is and how he's hungry so he wished she'd hurry up and cook them something. Quinn stops herself before pointing out that he could cook (and that he had before back around the time they became something). Instead she changes the topic and asks, "How did your first day of shadowing go?"

"Good," he answers honestly, "I followed Hank only to one job- he said I'll probably only be able to do one a day until break considering he doesn't work past five and how late we get out. He had to fix a heater and I had read some stuff about doing that that made me not completely useless- I found all the right tools when he asked me to pass them to him. He explained stuff as he fixed it and I watched. I think this is really going to work out."

"That's great," she comments and she means it even if she doesn't want to think about how his efforts working out or not working out could effect possibilities- because what happens is supposed to be something she _doesn't _stress about for now.

He knows pushing her on anything probably wouldn't be the best idea, but he volunteers, "I'm lucky Addie suggested this for me. I think it's a good job for me. I mean, I hate being in one place all day or dealing with a bunch of people and with this type of work you're never in one place too long and you probably only have to deal with a handful of people all day. Seems like it's going to be my kind of job."

"Sounds perfect," Quinn agrees. And she gets the meaning behind what he's saying too, but thinking about it would be thinking about the future again and she's not supposed to be doing that.

Before Quinn has to change the topic again, May comes through the door saying, "I know, I'm later than I said I'd be. Don't worry, dinner won't take long. I picked up a roast chicken at the store and I just need to make some sides."

This time when Quinn offers to help May takes her up on it. Not only could she really use the help today (and her kids certainly weren't offering) since the last patient's procedure took a half hour longer than it was supposed to, but she had had a conversation today that made her think that some of her actions have been wrong. At lunch with her friend/ fellow dental assistant Kristen, she had been telling her about the previous night and how Quinn had been there and everything. When she mentioned how Quinn had offered to help with dinner (and brought Rugelach) because she was polite and thoughtful- two things her kids weren't very often- Kristen had said, "Why'd you turn down her help? I thought you wanted her to feel like you were her family. You turn down the help of a guest. With family, in my experience, you put them to work whether they want to do something or not and then you criticize whatever they did." The more she thought about it, the more May thought Kristen had a point. Family included each other, they didn't exclude. She decides that she'll need to make sure she starts treating Quinn like she treats her own children and less like company in her home.

After another pleasant dinner, Quinn unloads the bags of craft supplies with May and Kelny's help. Puck sits at the table despite the fact that he had stated he couldn't be paid enough to participate multiple times.

"So what are we making?" May asks.

"Well, I got stuff so we can make a bunch of sparkly, blue, silver, and white, Star of David's and I got string so you can hang them up if you want. And, I was thinking, Christians set up Nativity scenes to show the main event of their holiday and I found this nice artist rendition of the temple and the candle so I figured maybe make a display out of it. Kind of like a diorama," Quinn explains feeling like she started out strong and ended sounding rather lame. A diorama? She's not sure what she was thinking when she decided that that sounded like a good idea.

"I've always wanted something like- an example of the origin of the holiday in the house," May says, complimenting the idea.

They get started on making the various decorations and Puck leaves using homework as an excuse not to help make anything (crafts were for girls). It turns out though that May is not especially crafty. Her attempts at making the flame for the temple took quite a lot of time and never ended up looking like fire. Since making a Star of David is a screw-up proof activity, she sticks to making them for the majority of the night.

With Kelyn there, most of the conversation is kept light and free from the topic of the baby. Except for one question that had apparently occurred to Kelyn. Right between talking about Kelyn's recent changing of dance classes (she was in hip-hop now) and Kelyn remembering to tell her mom that she needed a permission slip signed (yesterday), Kelyn asks Quinn, "You don't look very pregnant, so the baby can't be very big, right? But if the baby is tiny then why do you eat a lot more than you used to?"

Quinn's brow furrows. She doesn't eat that much more than she used to, right? It's not like she was binging… no. Wait. She's supposed to be eating not freaking out about doing so because it'll make her fat. She tells herself to forget about it. She doesn't have to watch her weight anymore. She's supposed to eat for two.

While Quinn internally reacts to the idea of gaining weight as she had all her life before remembering how different her life was now, May responds, "When a woman is pregnant she needs lots nourishment. Even if the baby is small, her body is supporting a whole other life, another person, so she needs more food to stay healthy."

"Okay," Kelyn accepts and moves on. She noticed that Quinn ate more than she used to and that she wasn't fat so she just wondered if there was some special reason for that. Like if Quinn was incapable of getting fat or something else cool. Unfortunately, the answer was boring.

It takes nearly three whole hours, but they get a bunch of sparkly Stars of David strung up and hung across the wall in the living room that the television was against. They put the diorama near the window with the menorah, the flames on which stopped burning hours ago.

Kelyn gets sent to bed as soon as they're done and Quinn prepares to leave grabbing her purse and coat. Before she can return to the kitchen to say goodnight to May, Puck sticks his head out of his room and calls in a hushed tone, "Hey, come here for a minute."

She can't not go, Quinn knows that. But the idea of going to Puck's room after the last time she was there and especially after the time before that she was there, has her nearly literally shaking in her boots as she walked down the hallway.

Thankfully, Puck doesn't move from the doorway (he knew it'd be weird to be in there with her after everything- he wasn't going to put himself through that if he didn't have to). He holds out a jewel case with a CD in it and says, "Here. I was just thinking about yesterday and the baby almost hearing music that probably results in brain damage and I figured that you should have stuff that her hearing it would result in something good. And I didn't think Madonna would really be good for that so I put some stuff together."

She's not supposed to be thinking about the future, but the future makes this moment complicated and she doesn't know how to respond.

She looks stuck and he had put some thought into what he was doing here so he's pretty sure he knows why. He explains why he's doing this despite knowing what he knows, "I know that whatever happens is your decision. It should be. It affects your life more than mine. I mean, I'm with you completely no matter what you want to do I'll do it. But, still, no matter what, whatever happens probably won't change my life as much as it'll change yours. So it's cool that it's up to you and everything. I just figure, either way, it'd be good if she was exposed to music that would like, make her smarter rather than something that'd corrupt her."

Well, when he put it like that it didn't seem so complicated. She's glad that despite the fact that they haven't talked about it really, they're pretty much on the same page. A decision will need to be made and there are two basic ways it could turn out and it seems like he's respecting both of them as options. She's not sure that she's okay with the idea of it being just her decision. Lately, she's been feeling like maybe it should be theirs. That may be something she'll have to think about despite not thinking about the future this month.

(She's glad he said he would support her completely for either decision though. She's not sure it'd be smart of her to truly believe that he'd be around, that she wouldn't end up on her own in this. But whether or not it's smart, she's realizing that she believes him all the same.)

"Yeah, it's a good idea. Thanks," she says accepting the CD. She adds, "Though Madonna and my own music collection is all music that's good for her. This? I don't know. That reaper song by the cult band you played once makes me think that maybe I'll have to screen these before I can let her hear."

"I listen to way better stuff than you do," he declares, blowing off her teasing.

"No you don't," she retorts playfully before adding quickly, "Goodnight," so she can get the last word on the matter in.

"Goodnight," he calls as she heads back down the hallway away from him. Since Kelyn should be asleep and her room is just across the hall he resists the urge to yell after her that the CD will prove he's right and she's wrong. Instead, he waits to hear the front door close and goes back into his room.

He didn't exactly spend a lot of time with Quinn tonight, but it was plenty of time to make it a good night.

-o-o-o-

Tuesday at school only has one thing Quinn didn't expect and one thing she wished she wasn't right about.

The thing she didn't expect was an envelope in her locker. In her hand writing it read "Carol and Finn Hudson" on the front- it was the same envelope she had slipped through their mail slot. Inside it she finds half of the money she gave them with a note that said:

_You don't cost as much as you think you do. And don't bother trying to pay any more, I'll just send it back to you every time._

_Hope all is well. Come by the store sometime. _

_-Carol_

Carol refusing to take all of the money wasn't a big surprise. But to find it in her locker meant that Finn had to be the one to drop it off. She didn't know if his mother would tell him about it and she really didn't think he'd pass by her locker (she was sure he had been avoiding this particular hallway) let alone pause a few seconds to get the envelope through the slots.

Quinn hadn't felt like she deserved Finn's forgiveness, but she had been hoping that she'd get it eventually anyway. She hopes that this, him almost actually acknowledging her, is the first tiny step in that happening.

The thing Quinn thought would happen that unfortunately did was that Mercedes didn't eat lunch again. Mercedes hadn't eaten with the other glee kids like she usually did, but still, Quinn was pretty sure that Mercedes hadn't eaten. But at glee club later (where they get assigned '80s pop songs) Mercedes doesn't seem any different than usual (hassling Mr. Schue about the lameness of the assignment) so Quinn begins to doubt if she's on the right path about why Mercedes isn't eating. She figured it was Sue-induced and therefore she should step up and say something about it, but maybe her family is having financial troubles and she can't afford to buy her lunch or maybe she just happened to forget her money for it today.

Quinn decides that if Mercedes doesn't eat again tomorrow, then no matter what the reason, she's going to have to do something. At the very least she should probably tell Kurt what she's been noticing.

(She puts off confronting Mercedes about what she thinks is going on another day because she's scared. She's never done anything like this. She's made good points about people- almost like complimenting them- but she'd use her bitchiness to do it. This- just expressing concern for someone and trying to help them because she cared despite the fact that she's not close to the person- it's a whole new territory.

She feels guilty about letting her fear get to her, but she's honestly not certain that it won't happen again even if she is sure that she should do something.)

-o-o-o-

For Tuesday night's dinner May orders Chinese food. She also spends a good twenty minutes trying to talk Noah into reciting the prayers instead of her because she'd certainly consider it a Hanukah present if he took a more active role in his faith. However, she doesn't manage to get him to do it. (She wonders if she possibly should have gotten Quinn to advocate on her side. The girl seemed to have a way of getting her son to do things he never wanted to do.)

After dinner, since he shadowed Hank again, Puck has homework to get done. Quinn also worked that afternoon (and got to dinner about the same time May did- both running late thanks to work) so she still had her homework too. She figured she'd have to leave early to go do it, but as Puck sits down at the now cleared kitchen table with his, he asks what she has to do (assuming she had some because he knew she worked). Luckily, she did still have her school stuff in her car so, taking his question as an invitation, she joins him doing homework in the kitchen rather than simply going home to get it done.

There's something weird about sitting at the kitchen table doing homework with Puck as May and Kelyn sit in the living room watching TV. Quinn figures that that feeling comes from actually seeing Puck do homework. She knew he had been doing all of his schoolwork lately (enough people had been informing her of that fact, that was for sure), but to actually see him doing it was akin to seeing an animal do something human-like. It was just a thoroughly odd sight…for about the first hour they worked at least, then the novelty finally seemed to wear off. Plus she saw him looking in the back of his math book for the answers, which fit the person she knew him as much better.

They, unfortunately, have enough homework to keep them working for hours. Kelyn goes to bed over an hour before either one of them finishes. By the time Quinn is finished (and she suspects that Puck hadn't just happened to be done at the same time as her, but had actually finished about twenty minutes earlier) May seems half-asleep as she says goodbye. It's also late enough that there's no way Puck is letting Quinn walk to her car alone. It had been a long day for both of them so not only is there no attempt to come up with something to say to each other on the short walk, there's no worry over it either. It's simply a continuation of the comfortable silence they worked in ending in a goodnight.

-o-o-o-

Quinn's Wednesday starts with Puck. And Puck made sure to find her first thing at school thanks to what his mom mentioned before rushing out the door that morning.

He waits for her in the parking lot and tells her as he falls into step beside her, "My mom's going to be late again tonight and not because she's working. She's going to go shopping and she mentioned how she's getting you something. I figured you'd want to know."

"Thanks," she responds, "I did think she'd probably do that, but it's good to know for sure. Now I'll have to pick something off the list of gift ideas I made and get it for her."

"You really don't," Puck tries to insist, not because his mother didn't deserve anything but because her money was going to have to go towards supporting herself given the situation with her parents so they all understood that she shouldn't be spending it on just anything.

"I want to," Quinn assures. "Your mom has been really great about everything. Even if there wasn't a gift giving holiday going on, she really deserves something in return," she tells him and she means it. Considering how her parents were dealing with everything, she was so grateful for May and how accepting and kind she had been.

"You could convert," Puck jokes, "To her it'd be like the best gift ever. She likes people being all Jewish."

"And since you know that you'd think you'd try a little harder to participate in your religion more for your mom's sake. Given how hard she tried to get you to say a prayer last night I think she'd consider you doing that a really great gift," Quinn tells him. She knew he was joking, but he had made a good point about his mom- one she didn't think he acknowledged enough for his mother's sake.

"Me and prayin' don't really mix," Puck says as an excuse. Mostly, given he didn't believe much in anything, doing anything seriously related to their faith like praying made him feel like a fraud. That's why, in the past, he usually stuck to stuff like hitting on Jewish girls or throwing on a yamaka or singing/playing songs by Jewish artists to "express his faith."

"Maybe you should think about trying it again," she suggests, "for your mom." It seemed like he had made a lot of changes to his life lately. She knew he was trying to at least. And she knew May would really appreciate it if he tried to change in this way too so she had to try and encourage it.

It's kind of weird. A few weeks ago she thinks it wouldn't have felt like it was at all her place to say anything. But now, after what they were trying to become, it didn't quite feel natural, though it did feel logical.

What felt a whole lot less normal and somewhat less logical was what Quinn knew she was going to do once she caught sight of Mercedes hanging on to her locker door as she fished inside it just before fifth period. Mercedes must not have been eating or be sick, but either way Quinn knew that as soon as fifth period ended and lunch began she'd have to seek Mercedes out and confront her about it. Which left Quinn trying to figure out what she was going to do all fourth period. While she knew this was something she should do, just the idea of it felt…awkward. She didn't usually express concern over acquaintances or anyone really. And she certainly didn't usually act on that concern.

By the time lunch started, all Quinn had come up with to say was "Hi Mercedes, you should really eat something." Yeah, it was lame. She was aware of that. But it was go time so it would have to do. Until she came into the cafeteria and saw Mercedes wobbling and, seconds later, collapsing on the cafeteria floor.

Quinn rushes over and she should be surprised that she's the first one to try and help despite having to make it through twenty feet of students. She crouches down on the floor and taps Mercedes' shoulder as she tries to check for serious injuries. "Mercedes?" she tries, getting no reaction.

"What happened?" she suddenly hears, causing her to take her eyes off of Mercedes for the first time since she got in the cafeteria. On Mercedes' other side, Sean Dillon (senior, full back for football, center for basketball), is kneeling beside her looking concerned.

"She fainted," Quinn answers. She tries again to gently nudge her back to being conscious, "Mercedes?"

"You think it's okay to move her?" Sean asks.

She's not positive, but she supposes that getting Mercedes out of the cafeteria and to the nurse would be a good thing, "Yeah. I think so."

Quinn moves to grab Mercedes' arm and try and elevate her, but Sean quickly steps in, halting her movement, "Oh, no. I didn't mean for you to help me get her up. You shouldn't be lifting like that. I can get help." Before Quinn has the chance to respond, he bellows, "TED!"

Twenty seconds later, a burly guy Quinn recognizes as one of the guys that played linebacker on the football team pops up and asks, "What's up?"

"I was hoping you'd help me get Mercedes up and to the nurse," Sean responds.

"No problem," Ted answers automatically and then he scoots by Quinn (who stands up and makes room for the boys to do what they wanted) and he takes one of Mercedes' arms while Sean takes the other as they manage to get her to her feet.

Mercedes seems to be aware, a little bit at least, as soon as her feet are planted on the ground.

With one of her arms hung around each of their necks, Sean tries to peer around to Mercedes' face and ask, "She coming around?"

Quinn steps in front of them and tries again, "Mercedes? Mercedes?"

They get a small noise out of her (they think- it is quite loud in the cafeteria), but her eyes don't open. The guys lift and manage to make their way to the nurse's office with Quinn leading the way, clearing their path.

(She really hoped she would come across anyone else from glee club because she really wanted help and didn't think she should be the only one there when Mercedes came to. Unfortunately, she didn't come across anyone.)

Ted promptly left (only fifteen more minutes for lunch) once Mercedes was on the table in the nurse's office and Quinn was surprised that Sean came and sat next to her in the small waiting area. She had no idea that Sean knew Mercedes, but she couldn't think of why he would stay if he didn't.

As if catching on to the topic in her mind, Sean asks, "You're in the glee club with Mercedes, right?"

"Yeah," she answers, feeling like perhaps she should elaborate in some way but stuck on what to say.

Thankfully, Sean continues, "You must know her pretty well then, right? Is this a… normal thing for her? Is she sick or something?"

"I think she's a little under the weather," Quinn lies. She was fairly sure that Mercedes fainted because she wasn't eating and she wasn't eating because Coach Sylvester made her feel bad about herself. But that wasn't anyone's business unless Mercedes decided it was. Trying to move on from the topic, she asks, "Do you know her well?"

"No," Sean answers, "I only met her last Friday- after the winter sports rally. She was really cool. Did you see her and that Kurt guy performing? That was like the most awesome thing I've ever seen at school." He seems genuine as he compliments them easily. Then he seems to realize what he said and continues without giving Quinn time to respond, "Of course you probably have seen stuff like that. It's probably what glee club is like all the time, right?"

"We do get to do some really cool stuff, yeah," Quinn agrees, "but Mercedes and Kurt with the Cheerio's was especially great." (Great in a way that had made Quinn wish she still got to be a cheerleader and be a part of such a talented group of people. Not that the glee clubbers weren't talented, but it was different from the Cheerios.)

Silence settles for about a minute. It's comfortable, reflective.

It's Sean who speaks up first again mentioning, "You know, before, when I told you not to help get her up- I'm sorry if that seemed like I was telling you what you could and couldn't do. When my mom has been pregnant I know there was a thing about her not lifting heavy things. And a person is probably way heavier of a thing than you should be lifting."

Quinn hadn't even thought about that, but now that he explained it was actually quite a nice thing he did. And, since he was talking to her like she was just a regular person and had stopped to help her, Quinn realizes for the first time that Sean is a really nice guy (before today, all she knew about him was what sports and positions he played and that he was popular). "It's fine," Quinn assures, "I've read that about lifting things. I just forgot in the moment." She's learned to be grateful for the nice people she comes across so Quinn tries to make conversation and get to know this new kind person. She asks, "You have younger siblings then?"

"Yeah, two. One brother that's thirteen and one that's three and a half," he responds with a small smile.

She's about to ask him a question about his brothers when she notices his attention has been captured by the "exam" room. In it, the nurse is clearly insisting that Mercedes remain laying down as Mercedes eyes shift around taking in her surroundings and attempts to sit up.

The bell rings distracting them both from what's going on in the office. When it does, Sean groans and offers regretfully, "I'm going to have to leave. I'm trying to keep my scholarship to college next year so I need to go to all of my classes, especially with finals next week."

Quinn nods and responds, "Yeah, I should probably be in class too, but I'm going to stay."

"Let me know if she's alright?" Sean asks.

"Sure," she responds.

He steals a post-it from the nearby nurse's desk and scribbles down his number before offering a friendly, "See you around, Quinn."

It's five more minutes of waiting in the waiting room and seeing the nurse talk to Mercedes before the nurse finally comes out of the other room and tells Quinn she can go in and visit for a bit and then she has to go off to class. Quinn spends those five minutes worrying about what she's going to say, how she's going to explain being here, and why she waited to talk to Mercedes. Getting an idea, she fishes around in her bag and pulls out a granola bar figuring it was a better conversation starter than the absolutely nothing that she had occurring to her as an alternative.

(What she doesn't notice as she sits there and thinks is Finn rushing by to get to his class before the late bell rings and the slight pause he makes when he catches sight of her in the nurses office.)

Once the nurse has told her to go on in, Quinn nervously approaches the door to the other room. She takes a deep breath, hand braced on the door handle, and forces herself to go threw with this and open the door.

With the sound of the door opening, Mercedes looks up and the surprise in seeing Quinn there makes Quinn even more nervous.

She walks over to Mercedes and offers anxiously as she takes the seat across from the low table Mercedes is on, "Here." She holds out the granola bar and waits for Mercedes to take it.

Mercedes accepts it slowly, eyebrows raised, still clearly confused/surprised by what was going on.

Still feeling nervous, Quinn hastily insists making the point she realizes she hasn't yet, "Eat it. It'll make you feel better." Seconds pass and since Mercedes hasn't made a move to open the granola bar, Quinn tries again, "You need to eat something. Starving yourself isn't healthy."

Mercedes' lower lip starts to wobble and soon tears are starting to spill out of her eyes. "I know," she confesses tearfully, "I've always thought that…but then…"

"I know," Quinn says understandingly. "I've been there," she admits feeling herself tear up, "I've done what you did these past few days most of my life. I dieted constantly and really often I just wouldn't eat. I knew that it wasn't the smartest decision and that technically I was underweight and didn't need to, but every time I thought that I'd have my mom's voice or Coach Sylvester's ringing in my head."

"I feel so stupid," Mercedes confesses. It was only two days ago that she felt great about herself, like she usually did. And then after a few harsh words from someone she had never valued before and she felt so awful about herself that she changed who she was. She seemed to change so easily, to become someone who didn't like herself in the span of a few seconds, and that was what worried her most.

Quinn understands that as well. As she mentioned to Mercedes, she knew that how cautiously she regarded her weight had been ridiculous and uncalled for, but she had done it anyway. She knew when she stopped doing that though and it made her feel better, made her feel like she wouldn't be the person that felt guilty if she ate a mini Snickers ever again. She offers, "Do you know how I finally stopped allowing myself to starve and think I was doing the right thing? I got pregnant, which, of course, is not a solution I recommend. But it was less than a day after I found out I was pregnant and I had been throwing up- not out of morning sickness, I don't think, just…it was what the news did to me. Anyway, I was lying in bed and crying and it occurred to me that I had thrown up everything I had eaten and a baby needs food to survive. So, even though I didn't feel like it, I ate. And I continued to do that- I would eat and I would consider what she needed, what would be good for her, and after a few weeks I realized that it had been years since I considered my own health in that way. I make sure she's healthy, but I hadn't done myself that same service in so long. And what does that say about how I feel about myself? I decided that I'm not going to allow myself to be that person again. I deserve to be healthy and feel good about myself and so do you."

Mercedes smiles a little, wipes away her tears. She tells Quinn, "You know, when Kurt first said that you were nice to him, I thought that you probably just had a reason to use him again. I feel really bad for thinking that now."

Quinn smiles and returns, "And I feel really bad that the most I said to you before this school year were variations of 'you suck."

That gets Mercedes to laugh a little. She finally opens the granola bar and takes a small bite. After she finishes chewing she says to Quinn gratefully (and not just for the granola bar), "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Quinn returns sincerely and with a smile. She feels so relieved that not only did this seem to go well, but it seems like she also really helped Mercedes. As Mercedes continues to eat, Quinn offers, "I'm going to stay with you until your mom comes."

It's only a couple of minutes until Mercedes' mother gets there and Mercedes and Quinn spend that time discussing what Mercedes is going to do now. Feeling like herself again, Mercedes declares that if Coach Sylvester thinks she's going to bully her off the team, she's in for a surprise. She's not going anywhere and the rally isn't going to go as planned tomorrow either.

When Mrs. Jones does get there she doesn't notice Quinn as she breezes into the room and asks Mercedes if she's okay and what happened.

Mercedes responds, after untangling herself from her mom's fierce hug, "I'm okay mom. I just fainted. I haven't been eating much the last couple of days. Coach Sylvester had commented on my weight and I took it too far. I know that what I did was stupid, Quinn helped me see that." Then, realizing her mom didn't know Quinn, she adds, "Mom this is my friend Quinn, Quinn my mom."

"It's nice to meet you Mrs. Jones," Quinn offers with her hand.

Mrs. Jones shakes it as she responds with a smile, "Gloria, please. And it's nice to meet you too Quinn. Thank you for helping Mercedes." Before Quinn can respond, Gloria adds to her daughter, "Well I suppose I should get you home."

"I'm fine," Mercedes insists, "I don't need to go home." She adds, suggesting, "I could use lunch though. And since Quinn was helping me she missed lunch too." She can tell her mom is considering it so she entices, "Come on, you know you don't want to go back to work."

Gloria sighs and gives in with a smile, "Of course I don't _want_ to go back to work. Who would? But we're having a quick lunch and then I'm bringing both of you back here and you're going to your making it to your last class, understood?"

Mercedes agrees and her mom tells them, "I'll go get you both signed out."

"You don't have to," Quinn jumps in hastily. Yes, she did miss lunch, but she did need to actually go to her classes (good grades were one of the few things she had left) and she hadn't helped Mercedes to get bought lunch by her mom, she did it because Mercedes needed someone to help her and she was in a position to. "I should really try to make it to the rest of sixth period," she explains.

"Oh no you don't," Mercedes responds, "Your baby needs to eat and you just told me about how important that is. You can miss one class. We'll find someone to tell you what you missed. You're coming to lunch with us and I'm not accepting anything else."

"Okay," Quinn accepts with a smile. Mercedes did have a point about how important eating was for her (though she had eaten a yogurt during morning break, a banana in the passing period before fifth period, and she had a rather large cookie in her bag she figured would tide her over until the end of the day). Gloria leaves to check them out and Quinn adds, "It's good to see that you're yourself again."

"It's good to be me again," Mercedes returns before asking if she had anything with her when she collapsed since she didn't see anything there. Quinn tells her that she didn't have anything with her as they head out to meet Mercedes mother in the parking lot, stopping to grab Quinn's stuff in the waiting room and Mercedes' from her locker.

As they walk, Quinn explains how it was that Mercedes fainted in the cafeteria but woke up in the nurse's office. She ends the tale as they're outside waiting by Gloria's car, putting all of the pieces together for Mercedes just in case she hadn't caught on, "I think Sean likes you."

Mercedes rolls her eyes and denies, "No he doesn't. He's just nice."

"Guys are only that nice to girls they like," Quinn retorts. Considering it, she knows that's not strictly true. Sometimes guys are jerks to the girls they like, but that wasn't relevant to the point she was making now so she refrained from pointing that out (even if she readily had plenty of examples).

"He doesn't even know me," Mercedes counters smartly. It wasn't that she didn't think a guy could like her (though past experience would be in favor of that argument), but how could someone like her who had spent maybe five minutes talking to her?

"Who doesn't know you?" Gloria asks as she unlocks the doors, both girls not having notice her approach.

Quinn doesn't say anything. It didn't seem like it, but what if Mercedes had a relationship with her mother like Quinn had with hers, at least to a degree? What if they didn't talk about this sort of thing?

Apparently they do talk about this sort of thing though because Mercedes answers as they get in the car, "Quinn thinks the guy who helped get me to the nurse's office likes me."

"Well why wouldn't he?" Gloria considers as she starts the car, "You take after your mother, you're perfect and he'd be lucky to be with you."

After Quinn recounts what transpired today and why she got the idea that Sean could like Mercedes, Gloria suggests to her daughter, "Well he sounds like a good catch and I agree that he could like you. You should wear a low cut top tomorrow, show off what God gave you, if he stares then he's interested and you know it. That's how I got your father's attention."

"I didn't need to know that," Mercedes says with a groan about the TMI on her parent's relationship history. "And I'm not doing it," Mercedes informs her mother and then both people she's walking into McDonalds with, "Sean seems like a nice guy, but I'm not going to start going after him just because you two think he may like me. If he likes me, he can pursue me. I'm not going to be the one pursuing again." Thinking of how she went after Kurt was still something that she felt extremely embarrassed about. Her and Kurt were fine and had been for a long time, but she had done the whole going down the wrong path thing before, she wasn't going to do it again.

"That's my girl," Gloria declares, "You get chased, you don't do the chasing."

Over lunch Mercedes regretfully finally tells Quinn that she had asked her congregation about Quinn getting on their babysitting list, but they wouldn't allow it. She did, however, give Quinn's number to a few families that were okay with the situation.

Gloria, it turned out, worked at the school district office in payroll and tells Quinn how she just finished processing her paperwork and her check will be available for her to pick up on Friday. Gloria is also a very straight shooter, so to speak. She doesn't hesitate to ask Quinn what's going on in her life regarding the baby, her relationship with her baby's father, and about her situation with her parents. Most people try to stay away from talking about those things with her and she's usually grateful for that, but there's something in the way Gloria does it that isn't intrusive and doesn't make her feel bad about her situation. She's just having a conversation and getting to know her. It also helps that Gloria is understanding about everything- calling her parents fools when she explains how they reacted to the news, declaring she's lucky that Puck is trying to step up as even her husband (Louis) had freaked out a bit when they found out they were pregnant with their son only four months after getting married (and just after he had started dentistry school), and saying that she's too skinny (which, having gained some weight now, were words that made Quinn feel better than they probably should).

Gloria drives them back to school after their quick lunch just in time for seventh period as promised. She hugs her daughter goodbye and makes her promise that she's never going to have to come to school because she fainted from not eating again, which Mercedes does. And she tells Quinn that she hopes to see her again soon.

Mercedes and Quinn part ways after checking back in in the office. They don't hug- they're not that far in their relationship. Instead, Mercedes says, "Thank you again- for everything."

"You're welcome, again," Quinn returns with a smile.

"You're going to come to the rally tomorrow to see what I come up with to do instead of what Coach Sylvester has planned, right?" Mercedes checks.

"Wouldn't miss it," Quinn swears- though she's kind of lying. If she had had to work she would have skipped it, but not only is the school on a rally schedule and getting out early tomorrow, but she doesn't have to work.

They part ways, both feeling like they know the other a lot better than they did this morning and like they wanted to get to know each other more still.

-o-o-o-

Just after the bell rings to be in seventh period, Artie rolls up to Puck and tells him how Quinn was seen in the nurse's office before sixth period. Unfortunately, Puck's teacher chooses that moment to stick his head out of the open door and threaten detention if Puck doesn't get in class immediately. He can't get in trouble, he's got people counting on him now, so Puck goes to class and spends the entire period considering asking for the bathroom pass so he can hunt down Quinn to see if her and the baby are alright. She would have had someone come get him if something was wrong though, right? She let him come to the doctor's appointment so she clearly knew that he cared about the well being of her and the baby so if something was going on with that she'd definitely tell him (he hoped).

When seventh period finally lets out he heads straight for the nurse's office only to find the nurse asleep in a chair and no one else in there. So he heads for Quinn's locker and is relieved to find her standing there looking as normal as ever. Still, he has to check, "Is everything alright? Artie said that someone saw you in the nurse's office."

"I'm fine," Quinn assures, "and so is the baby." Considering that Mercedes passed out in the middle of a very populated cafeteria, Quinn continues, "I was there with Mercedes. She fainted. Artie didn't tell you that though? I would have thought people would have known about that by now."

That is actually a little odd that he didn't know that because Artie mentioned hearing about Quinn from Tina who heard it from Mike who heard it from…well, he's not sure, he stopped listening by then, far too worried to pay attention. But with all those glee clubbers involved, it was surprising not to hear about the other one involved. "No," he answers, "I didn't hear about that. I guess the Mercedes thing didn't make it around to the other guys in glee yet. She's okay though, right?"

"She's fine," Quinn responds and she's glad that he doesn't ask why she fainted because she had no idea if it was okay for her to say the real reason or if she was supposed to lie. And if she was supposed to lie, she had no idea what she would say.

"I need to get to work," he realizes. Stuff with Quinn and the baby tends to distract him from everything else, but luckily that thought manages to pop through. He'd like to just hang out, but getting a job is more important.

"Me too," she remembers. Well, it's not like she forgot. She knew all day that right after school she'd be heading to work. Quinn just had an odd lapse in remembering that was where she was heading from…the time she got to her locker until now. That was pregnancy related, right?

"See you tonight," he says before heading off (he could have just said "bye," but it still makes him feel good that he can use phrases like this).

Quinn heads off to work and sneaks in phone calls to Eric when she doesn't have anything to gift-wrap. Jessica was having her…whatever today. Honestly, Quinn asked not to have the details as the day Jess was giving them she was already feeling kind of queasy and when Jessica started describing what was going to be done to her leg Quinn had to either stop her or lose her breakfast. From what she's gathered though, Jessica isn't having a surgery exactly. It's some kind of out-patient thing that's going to fix the fact that her leg is healing wrong. (She tries to forget the fact that "re-adjustment of a pin" was mentioned because then she starts to feel sick to her stomach a bit just thinking of it.)

Eric assures Quinn that everything went fine. The doctors were confident that Jessica would heal right this time and she'd be in a walking cast by the end of January. By the time Quinn is off work and heading to the Puckerman's Jessica is on her way back home with her husband- groggy, sore, but with lots of lovely pain pills.

Wednesday night with the Puckerman's goes much like Tuesday night had. May makes breakfast for dinner and Quinn comes to realize two things. First, she had never noticed how many pork products she usually ate with breakfast. And second, she does not like turkey bacon or turkey sausage. After dinner she has homework to do again and this time she brought it up with her. Puck doesn't seem to have very much work to do, but somehow he manages to sit with her doing it at the kitchen table as long as she does hers. May has fallen asleep in front of the TV by the time Quinn leaves and Kelyn has gotten back up (she offers to help talk Kelyn back into bed before leaving, but Puck says he's got a full-proof strategy for occasions like this- bribing her with the promise of candy tomorrow). She gets home late, but still calls Jessica and Eric to make sure everything is still indeed okay with them.

The long, tiring day gets to her and she falls asleep while talking to her sister, still in her clothes from the day.

-o-o-o-

Quinn is running just a bit behind Thursday morning. It felt like the week was already so long (like this school year had been so long) and it was definitely getting to her now.

As she's trying to hurry, Kurt texts her, "Meet me in the parking lot before school." If she's going to make it to school early enough to meet him for even a minute at this point, she can't afford to ask questions about why he could possibly want to meet her in the parking lot. So Quinn simply agrees and continues to try to hurry.

Miraculously she manages to make it to school with ten minutes until the first bell and she finds Kurt standing in the middle of the empty parking space next to his SUV. He gestures for her to pull in there and moves out of the way. She does as he seems to want, parks next to him.

"Morning Q," he greets, "sorry for the cryptic text- didn't have time to explain."

"And I didn't have time to ask for an explanation," Quinn responds grabbing her bag from her backseat.

"Clearly. You must have been running awfully late to skip drying your hair in this weather. And a bun, really Q?" Kurt questions.

"What's wrong with it?" she returns because honestly she put her hair up like this quite frequently (not so much at school) and she thought it looked nice…simple and classic.

"It's okay," Kurt concedes, "but you could do better and I will. I'm doing your hair at lunch. I'm already doing Mercedes' for the big rally later anyway so I might as well fix yours too."

It's a little scrutinizing, but she knows that Kurt just means it as a nice gesture and considering that the forty degree weather will likely keep her hair damp through the rest of the day, it would be nice to have it done and dry. "Okay. Thank you," she accepts.

"Well now I've gotten off track. I nearly completely forgot why I wanted you here in the first place," Kurt rambles as he opens his trunk to reveal a large cardboard box. "That package from your sister finally arrived," he explains, "and I really wanted to know what was in it so I brought it right away. Open it." Kurt then offers her scissors to cut the tape sealing it.

It's a little high for her in his trunk so Quinn opens hers and puts the box in there before taking the offered scissors (she's glad he was curious because she had been too). "It's light," she commented as she carried it.

"I found that surprising too and extra puzzling," Kurt returns thoughtfully as he gives her the scissors.

Quinn cuts through the tape and rips open the box to find it stuffed with clothes. There's a note on top that reads:

_Quinn- _

_I figured you're probably not buying yourself much in the way of maternity clothes though you're definitely going to start needing some. Don't worry, I didn't spend a ton of money on these. My friend Abby had a baby last year, she was pregnant from fall to summer like you'll be and she said that by the time she has another baby all of her maternity clothes will be out of style so she was getting rid of them anyway. Pre-pregnancy you're about the same size so I figured these would work for you. She never even wore some of them and others are barely used. Hope they work out. _

_Love, _

_Jess_

"That was nice of your sister," Kurt comments as he had been reading the note over Quinn's shoulder. He starts rooting through the clothes and comments, "These are pretty nice. Some of them are even fairly stylish for being last year's and maternity clothes."

"Yeah, this was really thoughtful of her," Quinn comments and she would say more but she knows that if she does she'd probably end up in tears. Things like this (or even just talking to Jessica) made her realize how great her sister is and therefore how much she really, _really_ misses her and wishes she were here as she goes through all of these things she doesn't feel capable of dealing with on her own as she has been.

She manages to pull Kurt away from his raid through the clothes and critique of individual items to get them inside just in time for the first bell. She comes across Puck briefly on her way to class and they only have time for a simple, comfortable hello- but something seems weird about the moment or maybe him despite the fact that things were fine between them. Quinn doesn't know what it was, but it stays stuck in her mind.

After quickly eating with a lot of the glee kids (joined by Puck), Kurt does Quinn's hair as he has finished priming Mercedes'. (He whispers a "thanks" as he nods his head toward Mercedes as they all sit in the choir room as Kurt does Quinn's hair and Mercedes tells them about her plan for the rally. Quinn knows what it's in reference to and simply smiles in return.)

By the end of lunch, she can't help herself any longer and asks (though she had given herself a strict rule about not bringing him up with people), "Was there something weird about Puck at lunch? And how a lot of people seemed to…notice him today?" First there was something weird in the hallway and then though Quinn thought it'd be weird that he was sitting with people he didn't normally eat with, that didn't seem to be what was going on. She wasn't sure what it was, but it was like people were looking for him or at him. Like there was something everyone knew about him that was making them…gossip maybe or just notice him. Not that they didn't usually, he hadn't exactly lost his popularity but…well, now she really felt just crazy thinking about all of this. It didn't make any sense and she should probably just let it go.

Mercedes simply shrugs not having noticed anything. Kurt comments, "Well he did wear a shirt that was actually clean today and not wrinkled. Maybe that's attracting some attention."

She sighs and tries to make herself give up thinking about this. (And the look, the little smirk, between Mercedes and Kurt doesn't go unnoticed to her but she has a strong feeling that it's not about whatever was up with people and Puck but was about the fact that she brought him up because she was thinking about him. She really shouldn't have broken her rule.)

The rally later goes fantastically. Mercedes makes a great statement and then sings the hell out of "Beautiful." Quinn decides to join her because she had always agreed with Mercedes' point, but she had spent most of her life too afraid to really live it but she's not anymore so she goes forward and she's glad when she's not alone in doing so and the rest of the glee club joins them (she's really glad when Puck is one of the first ones to join her- she had thought this wouldn't be the type of thing he participated in and she's happy to see she's wrong).

(Puck had been zoning out for the rally trying to decide between getting Kelyn something for Hanukah that was safe or something that'd be hilarious when Mercedes started talking. Quinn was a couple of rows in front of him and he noticed that she seemed particularly interested in what Mercedes was saying so he started listening.

He wasn't really surprised when Quinn got up and joined Mercedes. He's known for a long time that she's felt pressures- especially by her parents- to be certain ways. But he's never understood how she could possibly feel bad about herself despite what her parents or whoever may say to her. He gets up and joins her and the other glee kids heading up all the while vowing that making sure she knows that she's got every reason to feel good about herself and no reason not to is one of the things he's going to come through on from now on.)

Since the day's schedule had been altered so everyone could get out early for the rally, when the rally ends it's just in time for glee club. However, since the reason for the rally was because the first basketball game of the season was an away game today, the glee club was missing the Cheerio members (Kurt, Mercedes, Brittany, and Santana) and Finn because he was on the basketball team. Puck, though there for a minute, doesn't stick around (Hank had been understanding about him going to glee club and coming in to work a little later on Tuesdays and Thursdays and working later, but he figured with nearly half the club missing he might as well work instead- it'd probably look good in Hank's eyes too Puck figured). So that brings the glee club down from twelve members to six.

Apparently, Mr. Schue hadn't realized they'd be short anyone because he starts the meeting by standing in front of them looking pensive. After several minutes of waiting for him to say what they'll be doing, he admits, "Sorry guys. I wasn't prepared to have half the club missing. I have no ideas of what to do."

Predictably, Rachel's hand goes shooting up. With a nod from Mr. Schue, she gets up and takes Mr. Schue's place in front of them before launching into a long and fastly-spoken list of ideas.

Five minutes of this later, Quinn can see that this is just bad for everyone. Mr. Schue looks worried (clearly he's listening to some of her rather far-fetched ideas), Matt's practically asleep, and the rest of the people seem even more put off by Rachel than usual. Quinn herself is starting to get irritated by Rachel and the familiar urge to say something mean to make her be quite is bubbling up. But she knows that Rachel is a good person and that moments like this are just a result of her not being good with people (as Quinn can relate to as she hasn't exactly been making real friends all her life). She figures she should do something, anything, to save Rachel because if she doesn't she's going to end up doing something she regrets and Rachel will only continue setting herself back.

She raises her hand. It takes several minutes for Rachel to acknowledge her, but eventually she says, "Quinn. Did you want to commend one of my ideas?"

Quinn forces herself to ignore the opportunity here- telling herself that Rachel really wants to be friends with everyone in glee club and she just has far less of an idea of how to be a friend than Quinn herself does though she even struggles with it. She tries to smile a little as she offers, "Sort of. Since you haven't mentioned it yet, I just wanted to remind you of your idea to have everyone over to watch musicals so we could all learn from them."

"What's this idea?" Mr. Schue asks, perking up and actually seeming interested.

Rachel seems to splutter, surprised because she had not meant to actually try that out. It was her dads' idea and she really didn't want to find out that no one would come over because they don't like her.

Since Rachel isn't jumping in answering, Quinn explains, "Rachel was telling me about this idea to have people over maybe once a week or every other week to watch a musical or two. She's learned a lot from them and I know I'm not the only person here who's not really familiar with musicals. She thought maybe we could benefit from watching them and her dad's offered to let us have their house to do this whenever so she thought it could be like a club activity."

"That's a great idea," Mr. Schue compliments to Rachel, "and I agree that you guys watching musicals could really be educational for you and doing together could really help you bond as a team. I would have suggested we do it here a while ago, but this isn't the most comfortable place to spend a couple of hours. Rachel, thank your dads for their offer. That was very generous of them."

Before she can respond, Artie offers, "I'd be down with doing that once in a while. I like the musicals I've seen, wouldn't mind watching more."

"Me too," Tina adds, "As long as we don't have to watch the _High School Musical_ movies because I don't consider those real or good musicals."

"Me either," Rachel agrees in surprise (she underestimated the knowledge of most of the club).

"Sounds good to me," Mike offers.

"Yeah, depending on when they're scheduled. No weekend mornings, right?" Matt asks, having woken up and caught most of the conversation. He was all for an excuse to watch movies and do nothing else, but he wasn't about to get up early on a weekend to do it.

"No. Late afternoon's or evenings," Rachel suggests. She honestly expected that no one would be interested in going to her house to watch musicals with her and even if the rest of the club, those that aren't here, aren't interested, the people here are still way more than she could have hoped for. She'll have to thank Quinn for bringing this up. It made her feel really good to know that people didn't hate her as much as she thought.

The rest of the glee club meeting is spent hashing out some first dates (with Rachel's dad's being consulted by phone) and what movies they'll try first. Eventually it's settled that, given how many of them will be in and out of town over break, the first "Musical Education Meeting" will be the weekend after they return to school- in the mid afternoon so that those of them with social lives can still make it out on the Saturday night. Also, they will start with two movies: _Singing in the Rain_ and _West Side Story_. Other films they decided have to be included in this at some point, should it continue were _Funny Face_, _My Fair Lady_, _Grease_ (1 and 2), _The Sound of Music_, _Moulin Rouge_, _A Chorus Line_, _Cabaret_, _An American in Paris_, _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_, _Bye Bye Birdie_, _The Wizard of Oz_, _High Society_, and, because they would only allow Rachel to put one Barbara Streisand movie on the list, _A Star is Born_. Everyone had at least one film they were looking forward to seeing, though definitely not all of them as Mr. Schue had jumped in and declared that some of them had to be included (the oldest ones on the list mostly). But overall, it made for quite a productive meeting and set something that would hopefully be really helpful in motion.

After the meeting, in the hallway, Rachel catches up with Quinn and offers a sincere thank you before suddenly hugging her. Quinn literally can't return the hug as Rachel has pinned her arms to her side (for as little as she is, wow, is she strong). It's over quick but still kind of awkward. It's promising though as Rachel pulls away and smiles, Quinn returns the smile genuinely and responds with a simple, "You're welcome."

After glee club Quinn goes home and does her homework since she actually has the opportunity today and it's just her luck that since she has time this afternoon she has less homework than she's had all week- teachers lessening the load as finals approached next week. (As she does her work, she thinks about how tonight it means that she won't be sitting at the kitchen table in the Puckerman's apartment doing it with Puck there. It had only been two days that they did that, but she feels like she's going to miss it. Miss just being there and…she's not sure what it was about it exactly, but there was something and she's sorry it's not going to happen tonight).

She heads over to the Puckerman's at the appropriate time and she's not surprised to simply get a call of "Come in" when she knocks. She is, however, surprised to walk in to the kitchen to greet May and catch a glimpse of Puck sitting on the couch in the living room with Kelyn standing next to him and punching him in the arm. She's does a double take, getting distracted from saying hello to May, and realizes that Kelyn is indeed punching Puck in the arm, which he seems to be making available for her to do so, and she's counting her punches.

"Ridiculous tradition, isn't it?" May comments having glanced up from her mixing and caught what Quinn was looking at.

Tradition? What, is the fifth night of Hanukah hit your brother night? Yeah, she's so not solving this one on her own. Turning her attention to May she asks, "Tradition?"

"Yeah they buy into that whole hitting each other on their birthday for good luck thing. One punch per year plus one extra. It's ridiculous if you ask me, but they've been doing it forever, it's one of their things so I can't stop it," May explains.

Birthday? And since Puck is the one getting punched it must be his birthday. Things start to click in Quinn's mind. Some people at school must have known today was his birthday and that was why they seemed to be paying more attention to him.

"You didn't know did you?" May guesses by the contemplative look on Quinn's face. "I don't know why he wouldn't tell you. He likes getting presents and people who don't know it's his birthday can't get him one."

Quinn had just gotten to wondering why he hadn't said anything about it to her. Though she knew that they had never exactly been that…forthcoming with each other, but still, as May said, he really only could have benefitted from letting her know.

"You don't have to get him a gift though- just having you here is plenty for him, I'm sure," May continues, not needing anyone else to participate to carry on an entire conversation, "Especially this year having you here will be good for him. We never usually do much on his actual birthday since more often than not it falls on a weekday. So celebrating on his actual birthday usually consists of his favorite dinner- lasagna- and playing video games for hours on end with Finn. Obviously that's not happening this year so I'm glad you're here so he doesn't have to dwell on that."

The idea that this was a day he usually spent with Finn probably should have already occurred to her, but Quinn felt like she had a lot of information to absorb over the last few minutes.

"I'm not letting you guys just eat pasta that's filled with meat and cheese though," May says with a gesture to the salad she's tossing, "I don't know about your eating habits, but my kids never chose to eat at all healthy on their own so I don't care if no one likes the dressing or hates salad- you're all eating some and that's the end of that."

Quinn barely manages to catch on to what May's saying, too caught in her thoughts. Puck's birthday was going to be very different from how it usually went and if they had never…well, if she hadn't been in his life at all he'd get the birthday he usually got. Now he got her there without a present and his life-long best friend missing. And his mother was going to make him eat vegetables, which she had nothing to do with as far as she knew, but still, it just added to the disappointments. She wished there was something she could do to make it better, especially since she felt like she was the cause of the reason for his birthday taking a turn for the worst. For now she supposed that the best she could do would be to try and enjoy the night as much as possible so maybe he'd enjoy it too.

She tells May about her eating habits and how she is actually conscious of how healthy the food she consumes is- previously because of diets, now because of the baby. May seems especially pleased, but she tries not to read anything into that, she's not sure she's ready to.

She's soon distracted by Puck running through the kitchen and quickly into the hall with Kelyn chasing him. Puck yelling, "You already hit me enough times," and Kelyn valiantly declaring, "It's never enough."

May sends her after them with a couple of Starbursts to distract Kelyn. When she finds them in the hall near their bedrooms it appears that Kelyn tackled Puck and he's trying to shield himself from her tiny fists.

"Kelyn," Quinn calls. When it doesn't get the girl's attention she adds, "I have some candy for you."

Kelyn springs up and runs toward her, taking the candy from her hand in a flash as she continues on her way to settle down in front of the TV.

"Thank you," Puck says with a relieved sigh as he picks himself off the ground. "We're going to have to stop doing this- she gets carried away every year and she's starting to hit really hard," he says thoughtfully, smiling just a bit at the last part because even though he's going to have quite a few bruises, he can't help but be proud that his sister could cause them.

Quinn simply waits for him to catch on to how maybe what he just said could be really confusing to her considering he never mentioned it was his birthday.

It takes him nearly a minute of standing there in the hallway with her looking at him, clearly waiting and expectant, to finally catch on. "I guess you probably figured out by now that it's my birthday," he guesses.

"Yeah, imagine my surprise," she responds because maybe not being completely upfront with each other about everything wasn't their style, but she really wanted that to change about some stuff, the easier stuff at least.

"Probably should have told you," he acknowledges as he stuffs his hands in his pockets. He glances down at the ground as he continues, rationalizing his decision quickly, "But I didn't want to risk you possibly getting me anything because I know the doctor's bills are stacking up and I haven't even been able to contribute anything towards paying them yet. And I can't not be paying and cost you money. That's just…"

"You may not have to pay anything and I may not have to either," Quinn interrupts. His reasoning actually made sense and it was thoughtful and nice and she didn't trust herself if she kept let him talk so she jumped in with the truth (one she realized she probably should have mentioned a while ago- she supposes she really can't be at all peeved about him keeping something from her). She continues explaining, "I don't know for sure if it's going to happen, but my mom mentioned that she could pay and my dad probably wouldn't notice so I think she's going to take care of everything. And either way, I applied for Medicaid and when that comes through all future bills should be fairly inexpensive."

"Well, I still want to help no matter what," he promises, but quickly continues because there had been an unexpected bit of information, "But does that mean things are like…getting better between you and your mom at least?"

"Not really," she admits, "she doesn't seem to like the way things are, but she accepts them so…after I move out I know I probably won't be seeing her again."

"Sorry," he offers quietly, sincerely, because he knows that if he just never stopped in at Foster's that day or went up and talked to her or kissed her when she had plans to go out with Finn, her life would be completely different.

She knows he's not just saying sorry because her situation is bad, he's expressing that he knows he helped cause it and he's sorry for that. He's not alone in causing bad things for someone else though. She offers just as quietly (because it feels like there's something breakable here in the dimly lit hallway all alone), "I'm sorry it's me here with you today when it should be Finn."

He honestly can't remember if he's told her before or if all of those conversations were just in his head (they were), so he offers honestly, "I'm not."

He wants to elaborate that he's not sorry because yeah Finn was his best friend (and hopefully will be again), but despite everything they've gone through and everything to come, just having her around makes it all worth it. She wants to ask if he means that he doesn't really care about being friends with Finn anymore and if that's true then she wants to convince him not to give up on their friendship because life-long best friends don't come around that often and if he was giving up on it then he's just being stupid and a boy. (She wants to ask and hear him say no, that she's just more important to him than Finn- even if that makes everything more complicated.) But they're interrupted from doing any of that by the doorbell ringing and May yelling, "Noah, get the door. It should be the lady who runs Kel's daycare. I need to pay her. The money is…Kelyn what have I told you about stealing? Give Noah the money and then go wash your hands- we'll talk about your punishment later."

Of course they get interrupted, he thinks ruefully. He smiles just a little at his poor luck and does what his mom asked.

They eat and dinner is full of past tales of Puck's birthdays like the year he set a piñata on fire (seventh birthday) and the year they gave him a surprise party and, being paranoid and thinking there were burglars in the apartment, he managed to punch the first person who popped up and said surprise (it was Finn- fourteenth birthday). Quinn's favorite tale was that of his second birthday where he took all of his clothes off in front of their family except for his diaper (May had pictures), did some kind of odd trot/dance when they sang to him, and threw up the cake they fed him all over May's mother.

After dinner as they clean up May asks Puck what he wants to do next. She suggests a game.

Since Finn isn't there for him to play video games with like May said he usually did, Quinn tries to casually mention, "What board games do you have? Or did you mean video games? I've honestly never played one of those."

Puck takes the bait, thinking it's ridiculous that she's never played a video game and declares he's going to show her how (and enjoy beating her while she's learning).

So, for two hours and with Kelyn and May watching (Kelyn rooting for Puck and May for her), Quinn plays Madden 2009 and Mortal Kombat (the only two games Puck has after having sold all of his and his Xbox during his mom's last depression- the system they were using now was a gift from his mom- she bought it used and sometimes it had to be hit to work right).

Quinn loses every match of both games and she's frustrated to realize that she's not doing it intentionally. She would throw every game even if she could win though- his triumphant smile when he wins may be cocky, but she likes it anyway.

Afterwards they have May's homemade double chocolate cake and sing him happy birthday. Quinn has two pieces and wonders if her recent craving for all baked good came from the pregnancy or from years of denying herself such sugar and fat rich foods. He opens his gifts, which include _The Complete Billy Joel Songbook_ from his mom (always with the Jewish artists)- along with a little money- and five cans of silly string from Kelyn (by her smirk he has a feeling she bought more than five cans and that she has them smuggled away somewhere).

May sends Kelyn to bed and then plays Puck at Mortal Kombat. Surprisingly she wins and promptly calls it a night- she didn't want to chance another round and prove her usual lack of skill.

It's nearing eleven and tomorrow is a school day so even though she feels like she didn't really accomplish her goal of trying to make Puck's birthday decent, Quinn decides it's time to go home. As had become routine Puck walks her down to her car (because, as he had put it the first time, it's dark and late and she's a _girl_). They usually walk in silence, parting with only a goodbye. This time, when they get down to the last few steps tells him (feeling lame about it before she even says it), "I hope you had a good birthday."

"Good food, good company, video games- makes for a pretty good day," he responds easily- slipping that second one in there casually. He adds on as an afterthought, "Could have done without the happy birthday hug from Helga the lunch lady though- wish I knew who told her so I could get back at them."

They're at her car now and she's not sure if it's a smart idea or not, but says, "Well, happy birthday," and she leans forward, wraps her arms around his shoulders, and hugs him in a loose embrace.

His arms wrap around her immediately and he returns the hug. He thinks this has been a really great birthday.

(They've never embraced like this before.)

It's over in a second and then she's smiling shyly and saying goodnight before quickly ducking into her car and he's trying not to smile too big as he calls goodnight after her because he figures a smile as big as the one that wants to come out would just make him look pathetic (it was just a _hug_ after all).

-o-o-o-

Puck's Friday starts out with the possibility of a positive change.

As he's passing by Finn in the hall between second and third period he thinks that Finn regards him different than he has been lately (which was mostly not at all). He doesn't say anything to him or look at him in a friendly way, but he thinks Finn looks maybe a little guilty or regretful. And really, he should. They hadn't missed each other's birthdays since they were five years old and despite what he did, Puck thinks it's crap that Finn didn't even bother to at least send a "Happy B-Day" text. Even if it was accompanied by a frowny-face to make it clear that they still weren't okay, Puck expected Finn to acknowledge the day. (Not that he could blame him for not having done so. He probably would have done the same thing if the situation were reversed. But Finn had always been a better guy so he figured his birthday would have been a second, non-forced-by-Rachel, step in mending things.)

He supposes maybe expecting actual communication in any form was probably a little much. Finn seeming to maybe feel bad for not having acknowledged his birthday was much better than nothing at all.

Puck joins the glee kids for lunch again. He has no idea if they like or hate him being there, but he doesn't really care either (though he knows he should and does want them to like him). He's there because Quinn is there. Since she doesn't seem to mind him being around her lately he's taking advantage of that by being around whenever he can, which includes joining the glee kids for lunch. He's been doing this only two days, but he quickly figured he'd take a back seat during lunch, so to speak. He knows that half the time when he talks- without thinking- something insulting or offensive slips out so the less said around people he's bullied in the past and who really don't have any reason to like him, the better. Mostly, he spends lunch listening to the others, laughing when they say something funny, and trying not to get caught looking at Quinn.

Next in his day comes an odd encounter. It's while he's heading out to the parking lot that he finds someone has fallen into step beside him.

"I need you to do me a favor," Santana says, getting right to the point.

"Considering it was my birthday yesterday shouldn't you be doing me a favor? It's not like you got me a gift," Puck returns. She did remember his birthday, which was pretty impressive for her considering her claims that she didn't care about other people (though she did add a "loser" after "happy birthday").

"The only favors I do for people you already turned down permanently," she waves off. "Anyway, I need you to talk to Mario Rocha and find out if he'd be interested in having sex with me," she explains as if she was asking him to with something completely normal- like carrying something heavy and not asking him to question another guy about whether or not he wanted to sleep with her.

"Uh," is all he manages to get out.

She continues because she does know that what she's asking probably doesn't make sense to him, "I can't get turned down again- that would just be pathetic. And after Finn wasn't interested even after I threw in Brit to de-virganize him with me at the same time, I really don't need the hit to the ego of another guy saying no. So just find out if Mario would hook up with me and let me know before the weekend ends- my dad's away this weekend, fishing trip."

The idea of talking to a guy about whether or not he'd have sex with a girl he used to sleep with made him pretty uncomfortable. Especially talking to a guy about that kind of stuff who he didn't normally talk to (though he did know him- they used to be on the baseball team together). But he liked to think that he and Santana were at least sort of friends (and that it looked good to Quinn that he could be friends with a girl- especially Santana to help demonstrate that he wasn't at all interested in her- Addie had told him that'd be a good idea) so he probably should do friend-like things for her like favors. "No promises that I'll get to it this weekend- I'm working tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday. But I will get to it eventually," he responds.

"Of course you will," she responds as if it was obvious, "if you didn't I'd be pissed and you don't want to find out what will happen to you if you don't come through." She marches off in a huff.

Okay, so maybe they were only becoming friends in his head because clearly that girl had some issues with knowing how to be a friend. Like maybe saying thank you for agreeing to do something uncomfortable for her. Yeah, that'd be a long shot.

(That bit about Finn was pretty interesting too. He bet that had something to do with Berry even if there seemed to be tons of tension between them for weeks now.)

He headed to work intent on forgetting about his new task thanks to Santana and trying not to think about Quinn because he needed to concentrate when he was with Hank so he could learn and get a real job and start contributing. (Whether or not Quinn's mom paid for stuff, he knew it was important that he contributed to this situation in a monetary way. Plus, maybe if he showed he could do that, it would make some kind of difference to Quinn when she decides what's going to happen.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn's Friday isn't terribly exciting.

School passes and she heads home to sign on to video chat with her sister. Jessica had requested that Quinn model the clothes she sent but she was feeling too woozy from her pain medication to talk longer than a few minutes yesterday so they were trying again today. Jessica is still on the same pain medication though and she only makes it twelve minutes, enough to hear about Quinn's day and hear more about the surprise of the previous day (Puck's birthday) and for Quinn to show her one outfit, before she passes out.

Though she wants to talk to her sister, Quinn's actually relieved when Jessica falls asleep after only twelve minutes. She hadn't gotten any gifts yet and Sunday was fast approaching (plus she hadn't made it to the grocery store all week).

So Quinn heads out to the mall intent on getting things from her list of gift ideas and making it back out of the mall quickly so she had time to stop by the grocery store, drop groceries off at home, and still make it to the Puckerman's on time. These plans are promptly thwarted when, browsing gift baskets at Bath and Body Works, she hears, "Quinn?" When she turns around she finds Mercedes and Tina.

"Hi," she greets.

"Why didn't you say you were coming to the mall at lunch today? You could have come with us, we're making a night of it," Mercedes tells her and quickly adds on, "You can join us now though."

"Yeah, it'll be fun," Tina agrees.

Quinn wanted to accept their nice offer to hang out with them. She had barely started becoming friends with Mercedes and hadn't even begun to build a friendship with Tina, which she wanted to do. These were good people and she wanted (needed) more good people in her life. Which is why she hates that she has to explain, "Actually, I have to be at the Puckerman's in a little while. They invited me to spend every night of Hanukah with them, which is why I'm here. They're exchanging gifts on the last night- Sunday- and I'm trying to shop for them now because I have to work tomorrow and Sunday."

"You work?" Mercedes questions because at no time during their group lunches had that come up. And she knew Kurt had hung out with Quinn and that he hadn't mentioned that either.

"Gift wrap department at Macy's- just through the holidays," Quinn answers.

"Well, we'll help you," Tina offers brightly.

"Yeah," Mercedes agrees, "and we'll shop for ourselves at the same time."

She can't really argue with that so she just responds, "Thanks. That sounds good."

"So who do you need gifts for? I don't know anything about Puck's family. Though the fact that they're having you over seems pretty cool of them," Mercedes comments.

"Yeah, Puck's mom, May, has really been great about everything. I need to get something good for her. And he has a sister too, Kelyn. She's ten and Puck has clearly rubbed off on her though she's rebellious in her own ways," Quinn responds with a small smile, glad that she has them in her life to talk about.

"I met them once," Tina begins, "when Puck and I were practicing for the duet thing. His mom really did seem nice. His sister I only met in passing. She was… interesting."

Quinn chuckles a little at Tina's comment about Kelyn- interesting was certainly a way of describing her.

Mercedes realizes that if Quinn's shopping for this family, then that's what she's doing here in Bath and Body Works and informs Quinn, "You're not really getting Puck's mom something from here, right? 'Cause these aren't really anything special. I mean, they're almost always having some sort of sale, she could easily buy them for herself any time. Plus some people take offense when you give them something that'll make them smell better- they think you're implying they smell bad."

Quinn didn't think May would take offense, but Mercedes still had a point. It was a pretty generic gift idea and she really wanted to give her something that showed how grateful she was that May was trying to become her family. "You're right," Quinn says with a sigh and digs her list back out of her purse.

Naturally seeing the paper in Quinn's hand Tina and Mercedes both came around to peer over her shoulder and read it.

"Those seem like good ideas for the girl," Mercedes comments.

"You don't have anything for Puck on the list," Tina realizes, "were you having trouble coming up with ideas for him?"

"No, I already know what I'm getting him," Quinn comments somewhat distractedly. Reading over her list, all of her ideas for May didn't seem that great. May had been wonderful to her and she knows that the situation was only making May's life harder (how could it not when her teenage son was having a baby with a girl who he has a complicated relationship?). So what she really wanted to get May was something that made her life at least a little bit easier. The problem was that she didn't know what that was.

Interrupting Quinn from her thoughts, Mercedes (semi-joking) says, "Yeah you're probably just going to hunt down a big enough bow to wrap around yourself right?"

Tina struggles not to laugh and Quinn tries to seem unaffected and ignores the comment as she says, "I guess I should start with Kelyn's gift," and she heads for the exit of the store so she can go to the toy store and get Kelyn's gift out of the way.

"What? Are we still not talking about that?" Mercedes questions as she trails after her new friend.

Tina gives her a look that says, "Obviously we're not so shut up already before you give Quinn a reason to ditch us."

"Just sayin' what everyone already knows," Mercedes mutters to herself. She really didn't get why no one would say anything about it and since she and Quinn had had the whole bonding moment she didn't see why the two of them still weren't talking about it. Personally, she always thought Puck was hot, but she had also thought he was an asshole and that Quinn was right to want nothing to do with him. Over the last month/month and a half it had become very clear that he wasn't only a hot guy and wasn't always an ass, but he was also trying to be a good guy and he was doing that for Quinn. As far as Mercedes was concerned, if a girl had a good, hot guy interested in her she should snatch him up before he changes his mind. But since no one wanted to talk about it she was apparently going to have to keep that opinion to herself.

Quinn, with the aid of Tina and Mercedes, settles on getting Kelyn a diary she can password protect. The girls agree that she's probably at an age where she might like to have a diary and, given that both May and Puck would probably be likely to snoop, password protection was probably a good idea for it.

Quinn also ends up getting Kelyn a rainbow digital Hello Kitty watch because Tina sees it and declares that Quinn has to get it for her. Mercedes agrees, but really wants one for herself as well, which is enough for Tina to give into the temptation to buy one too. Though she wanted to save her money and she knew she was going to spend way more than she wanted to on gifts already, Quinn gives in and buys one for herself too since Mercedes and Tina insist that she get one so they can all match. (She's never had matching items to her friends before- unless one counted when some of the Cheerios would copy her- so she can't resist the urge to buy the watch in the hope that she can really consider both of these girls friends.)

She ends up buying May a George Foreman G5 grill- the one with the five interchangeable plates. It's considerably more than she wanted to spend (though a pretty good deal on sale for 45 percent off), but she figures it could make cooking easier for May in either being quicker than the stove/oven or it could be easier for Puck and/or Kelyn to use so maybe they would cook more often and May could cook less (and get a little more time to herself). She also adds a small box of Lindt truffles to May's gift since Mercedes mentions getting something for May to indulge in too (since she doesn't buy herself stuff like that- Mercedes had figured that as a single mom and from the way Quinn talked it sounded like she always put her kids first and didn't buy herself things that weren't absolutely necessary).

Quinn feels bad that she says goodbye to them after this. She lies and says she has to be at the Puckerman's and that she'll have to pick up Puck's gift during a break from work tomorrow. Because actually she has a little bit of time left and she just doesn't want them to know what she's getting him (hint: she stops at Best Buy on her way to dinner).

Mercedes tells her that she'll have to come along and help them get gifts when they go Christmas shopping- an invitation that she promptly accepts, happy that she seemed to be well on her way to making two new friends.

For dinner May made enchiladas (that were delicious) and somehow managed to get Kelyn to help her.

After dinner May insists they watch the movie she picked up.

Puck and Kelyn both groan at the mention of a movie, Puck leaning over to Quinn (who's in the middle of the couch in between him and his sister) to prepare to watch something about Jews.

May surprises everyone though when the title credits start as she chose _The Ten Commandments: The Musical_. It stared Val Kilmer and was a filmed version of a stage show. Less than three minutes into it Puck was already so tempted to laugh that he had to bite his tongue and hide his smile that escaped behind his hand. Five minutes into it, Quinn was doing the same.

After a small near-laugh escapes Puck, Quinn whispers, "Don't laugh," nearly doing so herself as Adam Lambert pre-Idol comes on the screen.

"I'm trying," Puck returns honestly, it's just getting really hard not to laugh and they're not even fifteen minutes into this thing.

Kelyn is saved from even being tempted to laugh as she already managed to fall asleep.

May happens a glance at the kids (hoping they _weren't _enjoying the movie as much as her so she wouldn't have to keep watching it) and she finds one of them asleep and the other two clearly struggling to contain their laughter. She sighs and tells them as she turns her attention back to the screen hopelessly, "I thought since that both of you sing maybe a musical would be a good idea. And since this also happened to be about something related to Judaism, which was what I was looking for in a movie, I thought it was perfect choice. I guess I should have read the reviews on Netflix before I ordered it."

Well since his mom doesn't sound like she's liking it Puck doesn't bother trying anymore and dissolves into a fit of laughter- quickly followed by Quinn because she certainly couldn't keep it in any longer given that someone else was laughing. They laugh until their sides hurt and they have tears in their eyes. Kelyn, somehow, manages to sleep through their uproarious laughter.

"I guess we should turn it off then," May says once the laughing dies down.

"As long as turning it off doesn't mean you putting in _Schindler's List_ again because if it does then I'd rather keep watching this," Puck decides. He could quote _Schindler's List_ at the drop of a hat so he really didn't want to see it again even if the alternative was continuing to watch an out-of-shape Val Kilmer with his shirt off.

May stops the movie as she says, "That's not what I was going to suggest we do instead. Actually, I was going to let the two of you go." She was met with very confused looks so she explained, "I thought maybe you'd like to go out. It is a Friday night and Noah, you haven't been out in a while. You used to like going to parties, I don't know if you did Quinn, but neither one of you know what your lives will be like by this time next year. I thought maybe you should take advantage of being high school kids since that may not be all you are soon. And I don't care if you go out and party because it's not like Quinn can get in much trouble in her condition and Noah, you can't really get yourself into a much worse situation. Though if you get arrested-"

"You're not coming to get me. You're leaving me to think about what I did. I know," Puck finishes for her. His mom said it at least once a week since he turned fourteen- he had it memorized.

"Good," May declares. Back to the point, she concludes, "Anyway, I'm letting you off the hook for spending tonight here even though it's Hanukah so go out and have fun."

Quinn wasn't sure how to respond to that. She had never really liked the parties her classmates had. She used to always have to pretend at them and after doing so all day they just came to feel exhausting. But now she didn't have to pretend, couldn't even if she wanted to. What would she be now though? Besides the obvious- "the pregnant girl"- she didn't know who she was and she didn't want to go somewhere where she'd end up pretending again because she didn't know who else to be. (She didn't have this worry at school. She was mostly ignored so it didn't matter who she really was. And possibly being ignored at a party like she is at school is another reason not to go- she doesn't need that any more this week either.) So, as nicely as possible, she turns down May's offer saying, "That's nice of you to offer, but I don't think I should be going to a party. With the way the kids from school treat me… I don't want to be around that if I don't have to." She adds to Puck (because she noticed how May made a point of saying that Puck hadn't been going out lately and she knows she's the reason behind it), "You should go though if you want."

"Nah," he waves off, "Billy Johnson's the only one having a party tonight and I hate that guy so there's no way I'm going to his party."

"Noah," May admonishes, "Hate-"

Puck knows where she's going with her tone and cuts her off, "I'm not taking it back. I do hate the guy. He's a complete tool."

May sighs in frustration but lets it go. Getting back to the point of this whole conversation she suggests, "Well maybe you could go to a movie then instead."

A movie kind of sounds nice (Quinn can't remember the last time she went to the theater), but, "Actually, with the holiday season, I've been spending more money than I wanted to so paying as much as it would cost to go at night- I don't really want to spend money on something like that right now."

"And I'm pretty much broke after shopping for gifts," Puck says though he actually still had to go shopping, but he could do the math and he knew all of his money was likely going to get spent.

Here she was trying to do something nice, trying to make sure they enjoyed their youth before it's possibly taken away, and it was seeming increasingly impossible to get them to do anything fun. Well, May is pretty stubborn herself so she declares, "Well grab your coats because you're getting out of here and doing something fun. It's a Friday night, you're young, sitting at home with me is just pathetic- plus I expect you to do that tomorrow night and the next so take advantage of the fact that I'm letting you go tonight." As May says this she gets up and yanks each of them out of their seats and ushers them to the door. She hands them both their coats and tells them, "Have fun," before returning to her chair in the living room.

Apparently not having a choice in the matter, Puck opens the door and they head out. They walk down stairs, both not knowing what else to do. "I guess we should figure out somewhere to go," Puck says tentatively as they get outside (it kind of seemed like his mom was forcing him to go out with Quinn- which was both weird and pathetic).

"But let's not do that out here. It's thirty degrees out," Quinn says with a shiver. She heads for her car and gets almost all the way to the driver's side door before she realizes that Puck has headed to his truck.

He notices the same thing and before they can start some kind of argument about who's car they're taking, he offers, "I don't get in cars girls are driving. It's nothing personal."

"It is wildly sexist though," she returns.

"Maybe," he concedes, "but it's also prevented me from being the passenger in a car that gets in an accident with a stationary object."

She really wanted to argue that this rule of his was ridiculous. She knew plenty of females who were great drivers and many male drivers that were horrible. Yet, maybe it was just a high school thing, she also knew plenty of girls who had managed to total their cars by hitting a fence post or tree or house. She had to admit that he had a small point with that and this probably wasn't an important enough issue to argue over anyway. She sighs and heads for his passenger door.

After ten minutes of trying to decide where they could go and calling Addie to see if they could hang out with her only to be unable to get a hold of her, Quinn finally offers, "Well, I needed to go to the grocery store and I didn't make it earlier." It's not exactly a fun activity, but they had literally come up with nothing so she figured it was worth mentioning.

Puck's tired of thinking so the grocery store is fine with him, "Alright, to the grocery store it is then." He pulls away from the curb and gets about a block before he adds, "You mind if we go to Ray's? Sav-"

"Finn's mom works at Save-a-Lot, I know. Ray's is fine," she cuts him off. Silence settles between them. There's a lot that never seems to get shared or said between them. Quinn had been thinking about how they should probably be making an effort to change that ever since the whole birthday thing yesterday. Given the mention of Finn's mom, she decides it may be a good time to share about some things he didn't know about regarding that. "Carol actually invited me to go to her store so she could give me a discount. I ran into her just after Sectionals and she was really nice. I tried to pay her for letting me live with her and she wouldn't accept all of the money and sent half of it back with a note telling me to come see her at the store again."

"She's always been nice like that," Puck comments. Since they were sharing about Carol (and maybe a little more), he offers, "She sent me a birthday card- got it in the mail yesterday. It came with a little money and she said she was sorry she couldn't be there in person."

She doesn't know if she should bring it up. It's kind of a painful subject. But she wants to know and she thinks, even if it reminds them of mistakes they've made, he'd be okay talking about it with her (kind of like yesterday and that moment in the hallway). So she asks quietly, "Did Finn-"

He can catch her direction pretty easily and responds before she can get the question out, "No." He wants to believe that things won't always be like this though. He knows she feels the same so he tells her, "I think he felt bad about that though. Don't know for sure, but I just got the feeling that he did every time I passed him in the halls today. That's something at least, right?"

"Yeah, it is," she agrees. She feels like there's been enough talk of Finn for one night (to continue on that topic would just make her feel more hopeless). Trying to find something to talk about that wasn't depressing, she offers as a tangent to their original topic, "Don't tell anyone because I don't think Finn has been told yet, but Carol has been seeing Kurt's dad."

"Really?" Puck drawls and from there they manage to dive into talking about the prospect of Carol and Burt (who he's never met) and the idea of Kurt and Finn possibly becoming stepbrothers somewhere down the line. This somehow transitions into them talking about everyone else in the club by the time they reach the grocery store.

Quinn knew everything she wanted to get at the store so she's done with her shopping after only fifteen minutes (it helps that the store is nearly completely empty as it neared its closing time). Ten minutes into following Quinn around, Puck offers to go next door to the coffee place and pick them up a couple of hot chocolates. They take a few minutes just sitting in his truck drinking their hot chocolates and continuing to talk about normal high school things before he heads back to his place. Quinn had to go to be at work at nine, Puck at ten, and it had been a long week for both of them so they both decide it'd be nice to end tonight earlier than they had been and get some sleep. (Kel kind of mentioned he looked like crap and Puck couldn't really disagree. This whole working thing on top of school and trying to spend as much time as possible with Quinn was wearing him out. Maybe the occasional early night would fix that.)

Quinn heads in and says goodnight to May and a newly awake Kelyn. Puck puts her groceries in her car for her and she's glad that May sent her down with leftovers that were in her arms because she's not sure how to say goodnight to him now. She had hugged him last night. Would it be awkward if she didn't do that tonight or every night now? Would it be weird if she did hug him again when it had been because it was his birthday and now it's no longer his birthday? It was a tricky issue that she hadn't realized until the moment of goodbye was there. Thankful for the hindrance of the leftovers, Quinn realizes she probably won't be so lucky tomorrow and she'll have to decide what she wants to do.

On her drive home Quinn realizes that at about this same time exactly a week ago she was driving home from Addie's and trying to decide whether or not she should take Addie's advice to put off even trying to make a decision about the future. For nearly a week now she had been doing that and she did feel…lighter. Like the weight on her shoulders hadn't been quite as heavy all week. Of course, the last week feeling better than previous ones might have had to do with spending ample time with a nice family, but she knew it was mostly because she had been consciously constantly trying to take Addie's advice, put decisions in the back of her mind, and take her life (their lives- her and her daughter's) one day at a time for now. As she pulls into her driveway, Quinn hopes that Addie is right about the second benefit of taking her advice, that a decision will truly be easier to make later when she starts allowing herself to think about it again.

Tomorrow, Quinn works from nine to five, which will be followed by church at eight on Sunday and work from ten to five. They're going to be two long days preceded by what was a long week. Which is what made the fact that she was still awake an hour after getting to bed really unfortunate.

The CD Puck had made for her to play for the baby catches her eye. She hadn't listened to it yet. She kept meaning to but it had been a long, busy week where she hadn't been home much and the CD was there at home, sitting on her desk. Now though, as she can't seem to fall asleep and she sees it there, she decides she might as well just give in to her current curiosity and listen. Mostly it's filled with things she doesn't particularly care for. There are songs by The Smashing Pumpkins, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith (not that sweet one from Armageddon), The Doors, Guns N' Roses, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Oasis, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. She doesn't listen to any of the songs all the way through and finds herself saying apologetically out loud (telling her daughter) as she clicks on the second to last song, "He has really bad taste in music." Then the first few notes of the song begin to play and, it being familiar, a smile spreads across her face. She hasn't gotten over her surprise by the time the very last song starts playing and she's rendered into a state of amazement all over again. The second to last song was "These Arms of Mine" and the very last one was "Sweet Caroline." Given what happened the last time she heard the first song, she was pleasantly surprised that she was happy he included it- that it could still be for them (though there wasn't a them anymore, not really- or so she told herself). The second song was particularly delightful though because she had only ever sort of suspected that she was part of the reason he sang it and now she could be sure that she was _the_ reason. "And sometimes he…he does something great," she says out loud not even slightly registering that she was doing it and stumbling because she still wasn't completely capable of coherent thought.

She listens to both songs one more time and falls asleep with a smile on her lips.

-o-o-o-

Puck's Saturday starts much too early for his liking. The first job of the day is to fix plumbing issue (one concerning a toilet) and he's fast finding that he really doesn't care for those particular assignments. The schedule for the day seems kind of flexible so he asks Hank for an hour for lunch so he can get his Hanukah shopping done and Hank easily agrees.

When lunch is over and they're heading to their next job (fixing a heater, which isn't a bad job-type), Hank asks making conversation, "So what'd your Quinn for Hanukah?"

He'd correct Hank that Quinn wasn't his, but he'd learned that there was no point. Hank just seemed to have a thing for referring to her like that. So he just answers the question, "Nothing."

Hank takes his eyes off the road and questions disbelievingly, "Nothing?"

Puck shrugs and explains, "I made it clear that I don't want her spending her money on me and I figure that if I got her something then she'd just feel guilty about not getting me anything. So I'm avoiding making her feel bad and I'm not going to get her anything. Besides, I just gave her a mix CD."

Puck's startled when Hank lets out a bark of laughter and dissolves into a fit of laughs from there that he just can't seem to restrain.

Well, that certainly didn't seem like a good reaction. Catching on, Puck asks, "So you think that I'm making a mistake then?"

"Absolutely," Hank manages as his laughter dies down.

They get to the house they're supposed to be at and Puck is left with a lot to think about. But just because Hank seemed to think that he was making a really bad move on the whole gift thing didn't mean he was, right?

-o-o-o-

No matter who else seemed to be working in gift-wrap with Quinn, the other people never really talked or even chitchatted much. She didn't mind- at least she didn't have to talk about her situation or lie about it so they wouldn't even know. Instead every time there was a lull (which wasn't very often) the other women would be on their cell phones or sneaking off to take an extra break.

Not having anyone to talk to all day gave Quinn lots of time to think (9-5 was a long shift). Of course there are a lot of things she's avoiding thinking about right now so having time to contemplate isn't exactly something she wants. Since she has it though and since she has to force her mind away from certain things, she ends up thinking about Thursday. Her parent may have never really been parents and their motivation may have been purely superficial, but every year for her birthday they would throw her a huge, expensive birthday party. A lot of people would be invited and even though she knew that none of them really knew her and many didn't like the person they did know, it was still fun. Every year was slightly different, but there was usually music and dancing and cake and general frivolity. Sure her parents only did it because they wanted her maintain her popularity and she always knew that was their motivation and not wanting to just give her a good birthday, but it was always a pretty good birthday anyway. Puck got a meal with his family and to win at a some video games he must be tired of playing since they've been his only ones for a while. She knows what he said about how he thought it was a pretty good birthday, but she knew that his birthdays usually consisted of at least spending time with his best friend and probably more. This year, he didn't get any of that and it was because of what she did (what _they_ did- she knows that rationally, but lying to Finn about the baby's paternity was her idea and maybe if she had told him the truth about having spent one night with his best friend everything wouldn't have gotten ruined so greatly). She feels like his lack of a good birthday is her fault, and he's been really good to her lately, so maybe she should make sure he has the kind of birthday he deserves.

If she moves fast it may not be too late, Quinn figures, so she calls May on her first break of the day. She doesn't divulge her idea right away, instead asking how Puck usually celebrates his birthday besides the time at home that May had already told her about.

"Well," May considers thoughtfully. Telling the truth could either make her son look bad or highlight how much he's changed. She hopes for the latter as she answers honestly, "The weekend after his birthday, after a short dinner with the family if it happens to fall during Hanukah as it often does, he goes out and celebrates with his peers. Of course I don't know exactly what that entailed. Since it was his for his birthday I never nagged him about what he did or how late he stayed out those weekends."

Partying for his birthday was how Quinn figured lots of other popular people remembered his birthday enough to cause people paying more attention to him Thursday like she had noticed. She checks even though she thinks she knows the answer, "And he's not doing that this year as far as you know, right?"

"No he's definitely not," May answers promptly.

Since she has confirmation, Quinn begins, "I was thinking, about what you said last night and how Puck's birthday- how he didn't get to spend it with his best friend…or any friends. I don't know what next year will be like and I was thinking that if this does end up being the last year he can have a carefree birthday with friends, then maybe we could try to give it to him."

"Absolutely," May agrees, glad that Quinn had decided to do something for her son. He'd been working really hard to become a good man and he deserved more pay off. (She was also happy to hear that _Quinn_ wanted to do something- hopefully it was another sign that Noah's feelings weren't one sided.)

Quinn tells May her plans and they work out some of the details. When they hang up, they both know that it won't be they type of birthday Puck is used to, but they hope it'll be good all the same.

-o-o-o-

"Hi Kurt, I was wondering if you have plans tonight?" Quinn asks getting pretty close to the point as her lunch break was only a half-hour and she had a lot to do.

"Mercedes and I are continuing our _Sex and the City_ marathon since my dad will be out with Carol and won't be able to catch a glimpse of it- it makes him uncomfortable."

"Any chance you'd want to come to a birthday party for Puck instead?" she asks hopefully.

There's a beat of silence before Kurt responds, "I assume gifts are necessary. Can I get him moisturizer or has someone else already claimed that as their gift on account of his obvious cracky, dry skin?"

"No one has claimed anything, you're the first person I called. And get him whatever you want," Quinn concedes because she really doesn't have time to try and talk Kurt out of giving what he calls "self-improvement gifts."

First person? Well, that was nice to know. "I'll be there then and don't worry about calling Mercedes- I'll let her know our change in plans." Before Quinn can thank him, Kurt adds on, "I'll take care of decorations too- that way it isn't unbearably tacky. Now, tell me what time this is starting so I know how early to get there, where it is, and what Puck's home is like so I know what I'll be working with."

After Quinn answers all of his questions she has much less time than she needed to call everyone else.

She goes with Matt and Mike next (who were luckily together) because she thought they would be easy. Once she tells them about the party, she finds out she's right as they simply respond, "We're down. What time and is there anything we can bring?"

Just as her lunch break was ending, Quinn managed to squeeze in Artie who also immediately agreed to come, asked if the building was wheel chair accessible, and offered to tell Tina since he was currently IM'ing her.

Since she had already covered for the other two women twice today so they could duck out for smoking breaks, Quinn asks them to cover for her as she finishes her calls.

She decides to ask Mr. Schue to come. She figured he was probably kind of lonely now that his wife was gone and it seemed like he wasn't with Ms. Pillsbury. Plus, he'd probably like seeing all of the glee kids getting along and doing something out side of the club and they could really use more people to come. He says he'd be happy to come.

Quinn calls Rachel next and braces herself for a long conversation. She gets right to the point asking, "Hi Rachel. Puck's mom and I are kind of throwing together a last minute birthday party for him tonight. Is there any chance you're free and would like to come?"

"Well, I've been working on a song for my Myspace page all day and I was planning to film it tonight, but I suppose I could put that off until tomorrow," Rachel considers. Really, she didn't like disruption to her schedule. But being included as part of the group had become equally important to her so she was actually quite excited about the prospect of this exception to sticking to her schedule.

"Great. Well, you know where he lives, right? It's at his apartment and it's a surprise so we were looking for everyone to arrive around five thirty," Quinn supplies.

"I'll be there," Rachel promises happily. "And I'll call Finn for you. Bye," Rachel adds as she hangs up hastily in excitement. This was so going to be her opportunity to mend fences and eliminate the tension in glee club (well, except for the tension between her and Finn, which would remain unresolved until he…well, she wasn't quite sure- and that was a big part of the problem).

Quinn strongly considers calling Rachel back and explaining why she shouldn't call Finn (what an awkward birthday party that would be). But by the way Finn still never looked at her she suspected Finn wouldn't accept the invitation. And if he did then maybe it would be because he had forgiven them and that would probably make for an awesome birthday. So either way, it'd probably be a waste of time to call Rachel back.

Next, she calls Santana. "Do you have plans tonight?"

"Of course I do, it's a Saturday," Santana answers as if Quinn should already know that.

"Maybe you could change them and stop by Puck's birthday party for a little while," she suggests.

"You really want me, someone who has had a lot of sex with your baby-daddy, to come to his birthday party?" Santana checked. Was she the only one who got how lame that was?

Well, when she put it like that, not really. But she had seen Puck not flirt with any girls for weeks now and she wanted to trust him. Not to mention they really did need more guests if this party wasn't going to seem sad. "We need people to come and you two are friends sort of, right?" Quinn says, returning to her original question and ignoring what Santana said. She really didn't need or want to think about Puck or Santana and their history or the two of them together. What Puck had said to her that day after they baby sat together hadn't been an issue at all. He may have said about needing to be with other girls, but he hadn't been living it so as far as she was concerned it wasn't an issue right now. (Though, she couldn't help but wonder what that meant.)

"He seems to think we are," Santana answers because while she considered him someone she used to have casual sex with, they did always sort of have a completely platonic side to their relationship and since Puck had gone all monogamous he seemed to treat it like that meant they had a sort-of friendship. She supposed that wasn't the worst thing. After all, she had found other uses for Puck (talking to other guys for her, hiding out from her dad at his place, lifting heavy things, etc.). "I am busy tonight," she repeats, "but I'm guessing your thing is going to start early 'cause you guys are lame like that. I could be there for a little while early."

She thanks Santana and quickly moves on to Brittany who says she'll have to check with Santana, but if Santana's going then she'll be there. Quinn also tries Addie. She doesn't know if she really wants Addie there or if Puck would because she knew them and she was theirs. But she tries to call anyway because Addie would probably want to be invited. She doesn't answer her phone again and Quinn starts to worry (that was two days in a row) until she remembers Addie having mentioned going to Michigan to visit one of her sons. She didn't say when she was going, but she supposed that's where she must be.

Quinn wishes she had more people to call, people to fill up the apartment and make it seem less like he had a very limited circle of friends after everything they did. After she returns from her break, Quinn ends up texting everyone that said they'd come inviting them to bring anyone else they'd like to the party. She hopes some of them find people willing to go.

-o-o-o-

Quinn goes straight to the Puckerman's apartment when she gets off work and when she steps inside (letting herself in as had become usual) it's instantly obvious that Kurt is already there. She thinks that the change in décor will probably surprise Puck more than the people there. She had mentioned to Kurt that they were celebrating Hanukah for today and tomorrow still and had mentioned the decorations they made and how they were blue and white and silver and Kurt apparently ran with that as a theme. Every inch of the apartment seemed to be covered in the three colors and, honestly, some of the decorations (like what seemed to be a plastic blue table cloth spread over the wall with silver flowers arranged on it like homemade wall paper) were quite effeminate.

"Quinn," May greets with a hug as she rounds the corner from the hallway. She releases the younger girl and takes a step back, gesturing to her outfit as she says, "Don't I look better than I usually do? Kurt picked out an outfit for me. He went through my closet and found stuff I had forgotten was even there. I've gotten into such a routine of just throwing on jeans and a sweatshirt when I get home from work."

"Yeah, you look fantastic," Quinn compliments as May did indeed look lovely in a royal purple faux-wrap sweater and nice, fitted black slacks.

"And look at what he did to this place. In all the years we've lived here it's never looked so good," May gushes. Kurt comes around the corner and she continues, "And it's all because of this young man. He's amazing."

"May," Kurt waves off modestly, "I barely did anything at all- after all, I only had an hour." He adds playfully, "Besides, how great you look has nothing to do with me. I only picked the clothes out- they wouldn't have worked if you weren't already fantastic."

"Oh pish posh," May denies with a hint of bashfulness.

"Seriously," Kurt assures. "Q, tell her that she should let me create her a J-date profile with a profile picture of her in this outfit," Kurt insists to his friend.

"No," May turns down firmly, "no creating me a profile on any dating site." Before anyone can say anything else May adds, "Now come on, we still have things to get ready before anyone else gets here."

As soon as May is out of ear shot Kurt tells Quinn, "Don't worry, I'll get a picture when she isn't paying attention. Then, with the assistance of J-Date, I'll get to play matchmaker again. I think I'm better at it with middle aged people."

"I wouldn't do any of that if I were you," Quinn warns. She could tell by May's tone that she was serious and she knew enough about the woman to understand why. To Kurt's furrowed brows she explains, "Her marriage didn't end well-"

"Didn't it end a long time ago though? That's the impression I got," Kurt checks.

"Yes, but…" Quinn considers how to explain without divulging things that she knew the family probably didn't want shared. "It was really bad," she emphasizes, "So bad that she's in therapy because of it. I don't think she's ready for dating yet."

Kurt considers it and concedes, "Fine. I won't do anything- yet. I'm going to set her up eventually though- match making those who are old and have given up on love is one of my new hobbies."

"I take it your dad is very happy then?" Quinn questions changing the topic as they head to join May in the kitchen.

Twenty minutes later, after Kurt has tried to argue that keeping the pizza in their "unsightly" boxes was unacceptable and lost (it kept them warmer), people start arriving.

Mercedes and Tina arrive first and alone as they were unable to find anyone else to come despite Quinn's text inviting anyone they wanted to bring. Artie arrives next with his older brother Malcolm with him who looks nearly exactly like him except with their mother's auburn brown hair and a bit older. Matt and Mike came alone, but said they invited a few girls and some guys from the football team who may stop by. Rachel comes alone (when she told Finn about it he simply told her to have fun and ignored her further attempts to persuade him to come). Besides Finn, she didn't have anyone else to ask.

Everyone seems to be grouped the same they usually are- Mike and Matt talking together, Mercedes, Kurt, Artie and his brother, and Tina together, and Rachel on the outskirts. They were barely ten minutes in to the party- Puck not even supposed to arrive for another twenty minutes, and already it seemed to be going badly.

All food laid out and nothing else nagging at her to get done, Quinn finally leaves the kitchen. May had just finished everything she wanted to as well and had begun chatting with the people she knew- Mike, Matt, Tina, and Kurt effectively bridging the gap between the two distinct groups. So Quinn heads to fix the other separation and approaches Rachel.

"I remember Puck having a little sister, or am I wrong about that?" Rachel asks.

"He's picking her up on his way here. May didn't want her spoiling the surprise so she sent her to a friend's house earlier so she wouldn't know about any of this," Quinn explains.

"That sounds smart," Rachel comments before quickly launching into a rant complimenting the decorations- both Kurt's and the homemade Hanukah ones- and then explaining how she came up with a gift for Puck.

Rachel talking fast and about things without being prompted wasn't unusual, but as she rambled Quinn started to get the feeling that in this instance Rachel was doing it because she didn't know what else to do. That sort of made sense she supposed- she was in a room full of people she didn't think liked her much. Quinn's not sure how to help or what exactly would help, but she hopes to.

Mr. Schue arrives and helps get everyone in one group as he greets them all and introductions get made as some people had never met May and almost none of them had ever met Artie's brother.

Santana and Brittany arrive late- only about five minutes before the estimated time of Puck's arrival. Puck gets there with Kelyn two minutes after the two girls and reacts to the surprise much better than he reacted to his last surprise party (it also helped that no one jumped up within fist swinging range otherwise instinct may have taken over like last time). Puck's eyebrows simply shoot up and then he smiles. But this reaction is overshadowed by Kelyn's who screams at the exclamation of surprise (who this whole thing is especially shocking for since, to her, her home is mostly filled with complete strangers).

After she's done, Puck comments, "So it's a surprise party. Cool. Thanks."

"It was Quinn's idea," May tells him as she breaks from the gathered crowd and comes over to hug him.

While Quinn cringes at that declaration, she hears Kurt whisper to Mercedes, "Subtle."

The party gets started with everyone heading for the food. More introductions get made as people eat and talk- most of them never having met or, for some, known about Kelyn.

"Happy birthday, again," Matt tells Puck as they stand around the living room eating.

"Yeah," Mike concurs. He says thoughtfully, "Different from how you celebrated last year. Still good though."

"Uh huh," Puck agrees. He hadn't been out to any parties or stuff in a while and he guessed that they were kind of talking about that now. He knew they probably got why, but just to be clear he tells them, "I don't think I'm going to be having many nights like my birthday last year from now on."

"Good," Matt declares and teases, "you were getting too heavy to lug home when you'd pass out dead drunk."

"All muscle," Puck promises, flexing for unneeded and unwanted emphasis.

Across the room Quinn had noticed that Rachel was standing near Mercedes and Tina and Kurt, but wasn't exactly part of their group as they chatted. So, after sneaking her third slice (she didn't want any attention for how much she was eating these days), Quinn heads over to the group and listens in to the conversation going on.

"I'm telling you, he likes you," Kurt says insistently.

"And for the hundredth time everything between Sean and me is completely platonic," Mercedes returns.

"But he asked for your number," Tina points out.

"We were talking about our classes and I mentioned how I haven't understood anything in a math class since seventh grade. He's good at that stuff he said, so he offered to help. That's all," Mercedes says with finality.

Kurt exchanges an eye roll with Tina, but they don't immediately respond with any Sean related comebacks- they'll get back to it later.

Quinn takes the brief lull to try and get Rachel included. On a whim, saying the only thing she can think of (even though she knew it had just been between them), "Rachel, whatever happened with that guy you told me about? The older guy you met at that dance?"

"Um," Rachel stutters, surprised that she was being asked about this particular topic.

"What guy?" Kurt questions intrigued.

Quinn jumps in with an answer (just in case Rachel wouldn't), "She went to a mixer at her temple a couple of weeks ago and met this cute older guy who was in town for the holiday. He was really interested in her, but she hastily decided not to give him her number when he asked. But I thought it sounded like he was really into her so I didn't think he'd give up that easily."

"Did he?" Mercedes questions.

"He's Jewish, obviously right? How attractive of a Jew are we talking? Jake Gyllenhaal or Seth Rogen?" Kurt asks at the same time, pulling a slight face as he said the second name.

Rachel seems surprised by their interest, but pleasantly so. She answers Kurt first, "More like Shia LaBeouf-"

"Circa _Holes_ or _Transformers_?" Kurt is quick to clarify.

"_Transformers_," Rachel answers and, still somewhat marveled by having the rapt attention of the group, she offers in answer to the other question/original one, "He found my Myspace page earlier this week and messaged me saying that he knows he got rejected but he had to try again. He asked for my number and this time I gave it to him. He called last night."

"Details," Mercedes, Tina, and Kurt demand excitedly simultaneously.

Quinn notices Rachel's smile and after their conversation she thinks it probably has to do more with the acceptance of her peers rather than the guy.

"His name is Eli, he's eighteen, he goes to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, he's double majoring in Music and Theater, he's seen every version of _A Star is Born_," Quinn hears Rachel rattle off before she departs the group satisfied with her actions having worked.

Quinn notices May cleaning up some plates and heads to the kitchen to help assist in getting a head start on the clean up. When she comes back out of the kitchen ten minutes later Mike has put his Dance Dance Revolution game in Puck's Xbox and set up the mat and is trying to persuade people to play him. Mr. Schue takes on the challenge first.

As they watch Mike compete first against Mr. Schue, then Matt, then Brittany, Puck has people coming up to him, offering birthday wishes and a gift.

It starts with Rachel (he's not sure she thought about how they may just open all gifts at once). She begins with, "Noah, I'd like to apologize for neglecting your birthday. Granted if you said something it would have been easier to know, but your birthday made me realize that it should be one of my duties, as glee club captain, to make sure no member's birthday goes unacknowledged by the club." She pauses, remembers, and adds, "Oh, and happy birthday. I got you this."

Puck accepts the gift bag and since Rachel appears to be waiting he opens it to pull out a T-shirt that reads, "Proof Hot Jews Exist." He laughs and says, "Thanks Rachel."

She smiles, happy he seems to like it, and offers, "I saw something like it online and I didn't have time to order it so I went to a kiosk at the mall and had it made. You frequently bring up being a hot Jew so I thought you might like it."

"I do," he confirms, "it's a great gift."

Rachel's gesture started a trend and then came Santana and Brittany. Santana snuck his gift into his room (a bottle of Jack Daniels- he puts it in his truck the next day so he can give it away soon, doesn't need his mom finding it and possibly being tempted). Brittany gives him an assortment of candy that Kelyn promptly tries to steal from. Artie gives him a pretty cool leather guitar strap and he gets gift cards from Tina and Mercedes. Mr. Schue gives him cash- probably more than he should be giving a student. Kurt gives him clothes- a vest, what appear to be skinny jeans, a t-shirt with a low v-neck- and he also gives him the receipt knowing they will likely be returned. And Mike and Matt each give him a video game (FIFA Soccer and Halo: Reach).

The entire group spends a while watching people face off on Dance Dance Revolution. Quinn easily gets persuaded into battling Kelyn (who's coordination has definitely improved since she last saw her dance). Puck holds out on playing until Kelyn pleads with him, which he gives into after less than a minute (he didn't have to take a dive to lose to her either). Rachel faces off against Brittany, but quits before she's declared the loser claiming that the game was faulty and unfair. Pretty much everyone plays at least once (except May who claims she's too old and Artie who obviously can't).

Artie starts a poker game for those who are either tired of dancing or watching people dance. At first it's just Mr. Schue and Puck playing with him, but then Kelyn joins the game and Puck bows out telling the other two not to let her take all their money. They're also soon joined by Malcolm and Santana. They don't play for much money, but in the end, Kelyn and Santana end up with all of it.

Eventually there's cake. Since May just baked one and wasn't about to try and get another one made today on top of everything else she bought an ice cream cake to make things easier (even if it was December and kind of cold for ice cream anything). Puck gets sung to again- this time with Mr. Schue insisting that they do a really good job with the song because, after all, they are a glee club. No one takes him seriously though and half of them sing normally and the other half really belt it out seeming to compete for who can be loudest (Rachel, Mercedes, Kurt, and belatedly, Artie and Tina).

Things start to die down after the cake is devoured. Santana and Brittany leave first, everyone was surprised they had stayed as long as they did (it was after ten now, which meant they stayed over four hours). Everyone else sat around trying to figure out something to do for a while.

"Spin the bottle?" Kurt proposes not so innocently. There wasn't anyone there he really wanted to kiss, but he wanted to see how the group reacted.

"No," was the collected answer from everyone else.

"We're not eight," Matt adds on.

"Eight?" Mercedes questions with a raised eyebrow, asking what most of the others were thinking.

"That's not normal?" Matt returns self-consciously.

He gets two "yes," responses- one from Puck, one from Kelyn- and the rest are "no"s.

"How about charades?" Rachel suggests. Someone had to say something, Puck looked like he was on the verge of getting really mad. "I'm excellent at charades," she boasts.

"We lost to your dads," Quinn points out.

"That wasn't _my_ fault," Rachel mutters, but not so quietly that everyone can't hear her.

"I agree with Rachel, let's just play charades," Mercedes decides- tired of sitting around doing nothing. "Kurt, Artie, Tina and…Artie's brother. We'll be a team."

Arguing about who was on what team would just delay doing anything and, after ten minutes of sitting around trying to decide what they would do, no one was willing to do that. That left Puck, Quinn, Kelyn, Mike, Matt, and Rachel on the other team, Mr. Schue not in on the whole decision as he was in the kitchen talking to May.

Rachel instructed that everyone write down movies or people or TV shows to be put in Matt's cap (which she volunteered for him). As most completed the task, talking died down, which was how Quinn and Puck both managed to overhear a few particular words pass between Mr. Schue and May. Quinn knew what would happen next and she quickly found out she was right as Puck leaned over, rocking his mom's chair in the process and jousting Kelyn who was sitting on the arm, and whispered, "I told you she'd mention it if she ever got the chance to talk to Mr. Schue."

"Would it really be that bad to have to do a song from _Fiddler on the Roof_?" she returns because even though he doesn't seem to insinuating it's her fault, she knows that she's the reason the two are able to have the conversation they are since she planned the party and invited Mr. Schue.

Before Puck can explain exactly why he hates the idea of having to do that- which is largely associated with his general dislike of musicals- Rachel whispers harshly to them (having overheard as she was squished next to Quinn on the couch), "_Fiddler on the Roof_ would be excellent material for us to work with, but you have nothing to worry about if you don't want to do it. I've been suggesting it to Mr. Schue for several months and he's still holding out. So stop talking and get your heads in the game."

"We're not even playing yet," Puck returns, but Rachel ignores him (he had a valid point and she didn't want to admit that).

The game lasts about an hour. Mercedes and Kurt work extremely well together and it turns out Puck and Kelyn do too. Unfortunately for the team Puck and Kelyn are on, since they had been the two to keep them on par with the other team, Kelyn loses interest about forty minutes in and then falls asleep despite all of the yelling. Her team loses after that, much to Rachel's annoyance.

Everyone starts heading out after that. Artie, Malcolm, Tina and Mercedes end up being the last to leave as Artie spent some time trying to persuade his brother to give Tina a ride so they could have a little semi-alone time together. Mercedes had to hang around as this was going on because she was originally Tina's ride. In the end Malcolm had just been screwing with Artie by making him beg- he had no problem giving a ride to Tina.

Finally, with everyone gone, May finishes a little bit of cleaning in the kitchen with Quinn's help and Puck moves Kelyn from sleeping on the living room floor to her bed. May quickly says goodnight to Quinn and heads off to bed when they hear Kelyn's bedroom door shut and though May claims she's just too tired to stay up another second, Quinn has a feeling that May is just trying to leave her alone with Puck.

Quinn hears Puck encounter his mom on her way to bed and thank her for the party and then he's in the kitchen in front of her.

She starts to panic. She's not sure why. It's fairly dark in the kitchen and they're alone and sure, that's happened before and nothing has happened, but…she panics anyway. Before he can say anything she finds herself blurting out, "Long night, huh? And you had to work all day before it. And so did I so I'll just head out. I should be getting home."

She starts to head past him for the door (all the while thinking of how idiotic she just sounded), but he catches her arm, makes her stop and turn. "Thank you- for the party," he says sincerely.

She glances down, hopes it's dark enough that the blush she can feel on her cheeks isn't showing and that the goose bumps that formed on her arms at his touch can't be seen. "Well everyone deserves to spend their birthday with friends and we both know why you didn't get to spend yours with the people you usually do. So I did what I could to find people you could celebrate with," she says and then chances a glance back up at him. "That's the kind of thing friends do for each other," she says and immediately wonders where the hell that came from. Were they really friends? Did she want to be friends? Did she want to be more- no, she stops herself from continuing that one.

In a normal circumstance a guy who's into a girl would be upset if she thought of him as a friend, but their situation was different. Friend wasn't the title he wanted, but Puck figured it was better than the one she probably used to give him in her head when he screwed up and they weren't talking (which he imagined to be something of the "bastard" variety). So he agrees with a smile, "Yeah, they do. And thanks to you this was the best birthday I've had in a while." (He would have said ever, but he knew how hard his mom had tried at giving him a good birthday so being that honest felt a little mean.)

"I'm glad," she finds herself quietly confessing with a smile. Being alone in a nearly dark room and smiling at him feels like a risky situation. She goes back to her previous out saying, "I really should be going-"

"You have church tomorrow morning before you have to go to work," he finishes for her. She never told him that so he smiles at her confusion and offers, "Artie mentioned it."

They head down to her car discussing highlights from the night and she hugs him when they stop on the sidewalk by her car. She didn't think about what precedent this would set or what she'd do tomorrow night. She just hugged him briefly because it felt like the thing to do (and she tries not to think about why it did or what it meant).

"See you tomorrow…or later today actually," he calls to her as she opens her car door.

"Goodnight," she returns with a smile.

"Have fun at church Jesus Freak," he bids her.

She finds herself smiling the whole way home, happy that some things about him hadn't changed.

-o-o-o-

Quinn's Sunday starts far too early. And, with the prospect of walking into a church unable to hide the fact that she's pregnant, she's feeling like her morning sickness is back. She can't do what she does when she's at work either. At work she's been wearing her nicest ring, like she did when she bought the pregnancy test that night. Her nicest ring doesn't really pass for possibly being an engagement or wedding ring given that it's silver with a small round opal at the center, but it made her feel better when she saw anyone while at work. Maybe a stranger would assume she's older and that she's having a baby with a man who gave her a pretty, if not inexpensive, ring to put on the all-important ring finger. But she couldn't do that for church, she couldn't go to church essentially promoting a lie.

So she puts on a nice dress, heavy coat, leaves the ring off and leaves for the church. Quinn ends up getting to the church early as it didn't take as long to find this place that was new to her as she though. She recognizes the building when she gets there, must have driven past it a hundred times. She never knew it was a church. It didn't look much like one like her old one did. There wasn't a steeple or crosses or a high pointed roof or stained glass windows. It was just a small, old brick building with a roof that appeared to be practically flat and surrounded by bare trees that practically hid it from the road.

Mary is waiting for her at the door and greets her with a warm smile. Quinn enters the church with her nervously. She's in a bulky coat, no one can tell anything, but she's nervous all the same. Mary leads her to the pew the rest of Artie's family is in. They've appeared to have left a space for her at the end of it, next to where it ends short for Artie's chair to fit in (as she assumed the space between Tom and Malcolm was Mary's). Tom stands up and greets her in the same fashion as his wife, adding that he's so glad she decided to join them. As she takes the seat in between Artie and Malcolm, Artie smiles brightly at her as he says, "Good morning."

Before Artie can continue (he was going to ask about her plans for the rest of the day, though he already had a pretty good idea), Quinn finds Malcolm leaning across her to say to Artie, "Mrs. Shaw is totally headed this way. I told you that if I showed up this would happen."

"You don't have to do it just 'cause they're going to ask," Artie responds.

Quinn's only left wondering what they could possibly be talking about for a few seconds before an older woman pops up at the end of the pew and says in a very sing-song-voice, "Good morning Abram's family. You must be so pleased to have Malcolm back. And has he brought a new special woman in his life?"

"No this is Quinn, she's a friend of our family's. But you're right about us being glad to have Mal home. He's doing splendidly at Georgetown though," Tom answers.

"Oh that's lovely," the woman coos. It's then that she seems to get to her real point, "Malcolm, we were wondering if you'd play. Since you're here and all and so much more experienced than our regular pianist for this service."

He smiles tightly as he responds, "Sure." He stands up and rolls his eyes to Artie as he leaves.

Artie leans over and explains to Quinn, "Mal plays the piano and every time he's been back from college they've asked him to play. He already did it for them every Sunday since he was thirteen. He doesn't mind really, he had volunteered originally, but he's just tired of having to do it rather than just sitting with us for mass, especially since he doesn't get to come back that often."

"Why doesn't he just say no? It sounds like they have someone else who can do it," Quinn asks. Though she knows that if she were in Malcolm's position she probably wouldn't be able to say no either.

As if Artie is reading her mind, he returns, "Would you be able to?"

"Right," she agrees.

Mary starts to chat with her for a minute, asking how things have been going, but then the service starts.

As Quinn listens to the readings and the pastor as he talks, she feels at ease in a way she hasn't in a while. She took off her coat, not hiding anything anymore, when the service began without even thinking about it. She was warm so she took it off, for the first time not worrying about what everyone in a church would think about her. Of course, by the end of the service that was one of the only things on her mind. But she didn't notice anyone stare or even give the slight bump under her dress a second glance. Though, she's starting to think that this church isn't at all like her old one and that's why no one seems to care. The congregation has a different feel to it. Rather than mostly being made up of the most prominent people in town and those that wanted to be them, this church is about an eighth of the size and most of the congregation seems to be over the age of sixty. The rest of the patrons are an eclectic mix- a man who's neck tattoo can be seen despite his button up shirt being all the way buttoned, a woman with three children who don't look a little like her but couldn't possibly all be from the same father and who doesn't have a ring on her finger, a man in his twenties with hair as long as hers, a middle aged Native American woman holding hands with the sharp-dressed woman sitting next to her, and a woman in her late twenties sitting in a corner with clothing covering her body from head to toe (some kind of wrap/shall on her head). She couldn't help still being nervous every time she stood as anyone who looked at her would get a clear view of her stomach, but she felt hopeful that this was as an accepting of a place as Tom had claimed it was.

There's a comfort in being able to believe that this is a place where she can be accepted. There's also a comfort in simply being in a church again, being surrounded by people with faith in the same thing she's been struggling to have faith in lately. She doesn't feel like having faith is that much of a challenge as she sits there and listens either. It feels easier for the first time in a while to believe that God wasn't punishing her for her poor decisions in making her pregnant, that maybe May was right when she told her that God doesn't let things happen to people that won't turn out for the best. She's not supposed to be thinking about it (the future), but when she used to she didn't see how anything could turn out well. But being in church, feeling like she has her faith back, makes her feel like maybe there is a chance that she was wrong to think there couldn't be a happy ending, maybe she'd still find one.

After the mass ends, the Abram's family follows most of the congregation heading through a small doorway towards the back of the petite church. Mary loops her arm through Quinn's so Quinn goes along (even though she had some stuff to do before she went to work). It turns out the doorway leads to a room that's even smaller than the church that has two long tables set up with coffee, hot chocolate, juice and donuts.

"We usually have something better for breakfast than donuts, though the three of them always snack on them," she says with a gesture to her sons and husband, "but we like to come chat with everyone. And today we get to introduce you around."

Mary introduces Quinn to a couple of people- the lesbian couple she spotted earlier and one of the many elderly couples- but then some woman pulls her away and it sounds like she gets persuaded into organizing some kind of raffle.

Malcolm comes up to her then. She hadn't really talked to him much at the party, but he apologizes for talking over her earlier and explains the same thing Artie did about why he didn't like playing on his rare visits home. She asks him about Georgetown and he lights up as he tells her about deciding to double major in photography and journalism.

Finally she can't hang around any longer despite what a nice gesture it was from the family. She says goodbye to all of them and thanks them again for inviting her before quickly heading home. She changes and does about ten minutes of fast prep work for the pie she's going to make later, grabs her homework, and heads to work.

Despite working ten to five, the time flies by as she tries to cram in studying for the two finals she has tomorrow whenever she doesn't have anything else to do. She has to hurry back home when she's done with her shift and hurriedly makes a pecan pie. She wanted to contribute to dinner this last night. Though she was short on time to make something, time didn't really effect her decision of what to make. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas her mom made pecan pie and she really missed it so far this year and knew she'd continue to. So she made pecan pie to make the season feel a little more familiar. (And thankfully it was also a fairly quick thing to make.)

In no time at all it's time to head over to the Puckerman's with her gifts and pie, her long day speeding to an end faster than she'd like (because when it ends, she won't have a reason to spend every night with a family and she knows she's going to miss it all over again).

-o-o-o-

Puck starts Sunday the same way he fell asleep the previous night- worrying. He had started to worry after Hank laughed at him for deciding not to get Quinn a gift, but then there had been the surprise party and he forgot about that for a while. After the party ended though, he realized that he really couldn't not get Quinn a gift after she had thrown him a birthday party. So then his worry became what is he going to get Quinn?

By his lunch break he's miraculously figured something out and manages to go shopping so fast that Hank seems surprised when he returns from his break early. He has no idea if his idea was actually good, but he's got nothing else so he'll just have to go with it.

When he sees Quinn walk into the apartment later carrying gifts and a pie, he's reassured that maybe his idea wasn't awful.

"I know all of this looks like our meal on the first night," May begins telling Quinn just like she had told Puck when he got home twenty minutes ago, "but it's not the same. I found a recipe for this brisket- it has mushrooms and dried cranberries with it. And then these are zucchini and potato latkes. Plus we have home made applesauce, some green beans, and donuts. I didn't make them myself, I bought them because trying to make them rarely goes very well for me."

"Sounds delicious," Quinn compliments as she sets her bag of gifts down in the corner.

"Is that a pecan pie?" May asks eyeing it. After Quinn's nod she sighs, "I love pecan pie. Oy I'm going to gain so much weight from Hanukah this year. Noah I'm going to have to have you get that treadmill out for me every night the rest of the month otherwise I'm going to expand to a size larger than all of my clothes."

"Just let me know when you want it out," he responds dutifully as he continues the task him mom gave him- peeling and grating potatoes.

His mom puts Quinn to work at the table across from him- grating the zucchini. Eventually she calls Kelyn in too, but she gets the easier task of string and tasting the applesauce (lucky).

Dinner is as nice as always, full of pleasant conversation. But there's an uncertainty twinged with sadness that hangs in the air. "Will this be the last night like this?" runs through their heads. It was the last night of Hanukah, the last night Quinn said she'd be there. They all knew Quinn was welcome any time, but none of them, including Quinn herself, knew if she'd be back to have dinner, to hang out, to do anything. (Except Kelyn- she was confident Quinn would be returning as she had made Noah promise her that she'd get to keep seeing Quinn.) Quinn wanted to believe she'd be back, so did May and Puck, but Quinn also knew that things in her life just seemed to keep changing so there was no guarantee that something wouldn't change (like Puck doing a one-eighty again and changing his mind about who he wants to be). So she couldn't know what was in the future- and she wasn't supposed to be thinking about it besides.

(Quinn can't help but consider the future at least a little though and she knows that if things do stay the same or if they get better, she'll definitely be spending lots of time in this apartment, with this family.

Puck's pretty sure Quinn'll be back. He's not so certain he won't screw up and make her want to go away, though he's going to try like hell not to, but mostly he knows his mom will be able to guilt her into coming back. She was good at that.

May knew she'd get Quinn to come back. They were family now so even if she had to trick the girl with guilt, she'd get her back. Family took care of each other and they needed to be around each other to do so, so she'd get her to come back. Or she'd just come to her- May had a few choice words she had been wanting to say to Quinn's parents anyway.)

After dinner they gather in the living room to open gifts.

When Quinn gets her bag of gifts May tells her, "Honey you didn't have to get us anything."

"And you didn't have to get me anything," she returns.

They have a tradition of one person opening their gifts at a time that way they all know what everyone got (plus with only usually three of them there it was a depressingly short process otherwise).

Kelyn goes first. She likes the diary from Quinn and immediately taunts Puck that he won't be able to get into it because it requires a password. Much to Quinn's surprise, Kelyn didn't seem familiar with Hello Kitty, but thought the watch was cute anyway and especially liked it when she learned Quinn had the same one.

From her mom Kelyn gets clothes, a Justin Bieber doll she's ridiculously psyched about, and a gift the elicits an ever bigger squeal than the doll- an iPod shuffle.

Finally, Kelyn opens Puck's gift- shoes, plain white sneakers.

It seems pretty boring until he pulls out a package with markers and paint and glitter in it an tells her, "Now all this came with those so you could decorate them however you want and then you get to be the only person with shoes exactly like yours. But first you have to promise not to put anything on them that will get you in trouble at school."

"Deal," Kelyn agrees immediately, very excited about the idea of having shoes that she's supposed to write on (she's already written on many she wasn't supposed to) and that no one else can have shoes like hers.

"Quinn honey, you go next," May insists.

Quinn opens Kelyn's gift first- it's a beaded bracelet.

"Those ones we made, mine got all frayed and broke and I thought yours probably did too so I made you a new one that shouldn't fall apart," Kelyn explains.

"Mine did fray too," Quinn tells her (though really she had kept it in her jewelry box and it hadn't), "Thank you for replacing it." She smiles as she puts on her new bracelet.

She goes to May's multiple gifts next. May gets her clothes- a heavy sweater and super comfy looking slipper boots. She also gets her a couple of pregnancy related gifts- _What to Expect When You're Expecting_ and a cream to prevent stretch marks that May read was supposed to be very effective. Finally, in a card, she finds the last two gifts from May- two gift cards, one to Ray's grocery store and one to Target.

May tells her as she finds them in the card, "I thought practical gifts would probably be what you need most right now."

Quinn knows what May is saying even though she clearly tried not to. No one was really helping her with the basics anymore, so May got her stuff with that in mind. She got her the kind of stuff someone's mother would get them. "Thank you," she responds sincerely grateful.

Finally, she opens Puck's gift, which is quite large. She unwraps the box and reads, "Calphalon 6 Piece Bakeware Set."

He's too nervous that it was a bad idea to wait to see if she's going to have a good reaction to it or if she's going to fake one, so he rambles explaining, "I don't know if that stuff is any good or if it's the kind of stuff you use. But I figured that whatever you're using to bake now is your parents'…so you won't get to keep using it. And whenever you're out on your own, since you're good at baking, you should have stuff to do it with."

She's very surprised by the gift. She thought he'd just get her something any girl would like (i.e. anything pretty). Or that he'd get her something pregnancy related because that's what she was right now and he helped her get there. But instead he got her something based on who she was and how well he knew her life. He must have had to really think about what she liked to do and what she could lose and came up with something he could get her so she wouldn't end up losing one small thing she liked to do once everything changed again. It was so thoughtful and nice. She feels like tearing up but that would completely ruin the jovial mood of the holiday so she tries not to think about how the gift makes her feel and offers, "They are the sort of thing I use- and more. It's a really good brand too. I'm sure I'll get a lot of use out of them. Thank you."

(She's been smiling since he started explaining it. A giant, happy smile that makes him feel like all the worry over the gift was more than worth it.

He's going to have to thank Hank for laughing at his no-gift idea. If he hadn't of gotten her one, he wouldn't have this moment where she's looking at him like she's impressed and grateful and genuinely happy all at once. And he wouldn't trade this moment for anything.)

"Noah start with my gifts," May tells him so they can get moving again. The longer the kids just sat there looking all googly eyed at each other, given that they currently only had a platonic relationship, the more awkward it could turn out when they realize how long they had been staring at each other-hence the need for an interruption.

He grabs what looks like a box for clothes first- his mom always got them clothes for Hanukah. Inside he finds a couple of flannel shirts, which should come in handy with the colder weather settling in. He thanks her and moves on to the other gift- a somewhat heavy box. He rips the paper off in one swift move and can't believe his eyes. He scans the words on the box (HP G62m laptop) twice before he exclaims disbelievingly, "You got me a laptop? A _new_ laptop?"

"It better be new- that's what I ordered at least," May responds. "This is partially a Hanukah gift and partially a birthday gift. You didn't really think all I'd get you for your birthday was a book and barely enough cash for you to do your Hanukah shopping on, did you?"

"But-," he splutters, "this is a _new_ computer. We can't afford this."

"It's not nice to talk money," she admonishes, "plus you don't know everything about our finances. I've actually been putting a bit aside to get you your own computer since you started high school and since you finally decided to take your studies seriously and since it could help you study for work, I decided to go ahead and take the plunge. Not to mention the really good deal I found, which included a payment plan without interest. I told Carol about it and it was so good she took advantage of it too."

"Ma' this is too much," Puck tells her because they've run out of money before, had their bank account read zero, and the last time wasn't that long ago.

"No it's not," she insists, "I told you- you don't know everything about our finances. So stop dwelling on the cost and enjoy the fact that you don't have to use our six-year-old computer anymore. And take care of that thing because I'm not buying you another one- next computer you get will have to be purchased with your own money."

Well if she really wants him to he supposes he'll just have to accept the gift. "Thank you," he tells her gratefully as he gets up, crosses the room, and hugs her.

As he's returning to his seat, Kelyn comments to her mom, "Why'd you make him open that first? Now my gift is going to look lame in comparison and Quinn's probably will too."

Now that Kelyn had brought up the idea, Quinn realized that Kelyn had a point. She had already been worried that her gift was lame and obvious- especially after getting Puck's gift- but now she was dreading him opening it.

"He'll like his other gifts just fine," May waves off.

"All gifts are good," Puck agrees as he opens the envelope that has "To: Egghead," written on it (obviously from Kelyn). Inside he finds Lottery scratchers. "Lottery scratchers?" he questions. You had to be eighteen to buy those so how did she get any? "How did you-"

"No one watches the machines at that Chevron station that's near my school," Kelyn answers.

"Awesome, thanks," he says and then May sternly clears her throat. He has to think on what his mom could have meant by that for a second, but he finally realizes, "Oh, and no more buying lottery tickets." He winks at her because if they win he's totally not going to make any effort to enforce that.

She agrees easily, knowing he probably didn't really mean it, "Fine."

He moves on to Quinn's gift and smiles when he unwraps it. "_ER_," he says.

"Seasons one and two," she says, feeling like it was a particularly lame gift. "I thought that keeping up with whenever it's on would probably be hard with school and work so now you could watch whenever you want. And there's something else on the back," she explains feeling increasingly like she came up with the stupidest gift idea.

He finds a photo of George Clooney taped to the back of the DVD's and either those are some squiggly lines or, "Is this an autographed picture of George Clooney?"

"Not exactly," she answers. She feels, oddly, very embarrassed as she explains, "I ordered a plain picture and then I looked up what his autograph looks like, which is basically two very poorly written G's weirdly enough, and I copied it. It could pass for being authentic. You could probably sell it that way."

He remembers talking about this before with her, way back when they were first at Foster's. Of course his idea had been to just sign "George Clooney" to something in cursive but her idea was much smarter. Sadly he knows he probably wouldn't have thought of looking up the guy's actual signature. He kind of hates that she went through the trouble of finding out what a real autograph looks like and perfecting it because he knows he's never going to sell this (well, if times get desperate enough maybe there's a small chance he will). He likes that it shows that she remembers a small nothing moment between them, that she remembers as much as he does (and maybe therefore feels the same way about him as he does about her). "Thank you. This was genius," he says with a gesture to the "autographed" photo, "and I don't think I've ever gotten to see the episodes of any season in order since some people always change the channel when I watch it," he says pointedly.

"I don't like the blood and guts," May says at the same time Kelyn retorts, "It's _boring_."

He raises his eyebrows at Quinn, as if his point about what he used to have to deal with when he tried to watch the one TV show he actually tried to follow had been made, and tells her again sincerely, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she responds because it's what she's supposed to say (though the smile she wore when she said it wasn't part of the polite response, just provoked by his smile).

(She doesn't feel like her idea for his gift was so stupid anymore.)

"Finally it's my turn," May says because it seemed like another interruption could possibly be necessary- the kids were smiling at each other again, seemed like it could lead to awkwardness just like the last time.

May starts with Kelyn's gift, she asks after opening it, "Movie tickets? Does this mean you're going to see something with me willingly?"

"Maybe. It depends on the movie," Kelyn says because she's not that opposed to going to the movies with her mom (though with her friends was better), but her mom liked those super depressing movies and those just weren't worth the time in her opinion.

"I'll find something you want to see so you have to go with me, I promise," May says making it her mission.

May opens the chocolates Quinn got her first and spends a good two minutes debating to herself out loud whether or not she should eat one, ultimately deciding to because it was the holidays after all and she already indulged enough to end up on the treadmill so one truffle couldn't hurt that much. Then she opens Quinn's other gift and immediately tells her, eyes wide with surprise, "Oh honey no, I can't accept this, this is way too much."

Rather than explaining how the George Foreman grill was on sale, Quinn responds honestly, "It's not too much. If it wasn't for you…if it wasn't for all three of you, I wouldn't have anyone to buy anything for at all this year or anywhere to be… So think of this as a thank you for everything, then it's not enough instead of being too much."

"You're getting me all farklempt," May says, fanning at her eyes with her hand trying to make the water in them dry up. She gets up and hugs Quinn as she says, "Thank you for the gifts. And you know we're very happy to have you here, right? And it's their loss that they don't have you with them this year. You know that too right?"

"I know," Quinn responds, trying not to cry herself. And she does know that this family is happy to have her spend time with them. She also knows that since her parents chose to lose her as their child, it is their loss. But even though they didn't often feel like her family and she frequently didn't like them much, it's her loss too. A loss she's been feeling more and more lately as Christmas approaches because that was one time of year where they felt like a family the most.

May pulls away and smiles at Quinn, who smiles in return. She returns to her seat wiping away the water in her eyes and moves on to her son's gift. She opens the box to find a scrub shirt- dark navy, mock wrap, empire waist, with a white and light blue sand dollar print on it. She raises an eyebrow at her son because it wasn't like him to even attempt to pick out any type of clothes for her or Kelyn and it especially wasn't like him to pick something good (and this was scrub shirt was so nice it could pass for an actual, nice shirt and not something she worked on peoples' teeth in).

Puck knows it was an unusual gift for him. He had been wandering the mall trying to come up with something, saw the medical wear store and as he looked in the window he realized he'd been seeing his mom in the same scrub shirts for years so he figured she deserved at least one new one (she was kind of bad about buying herself stuff so it wasn't a surprising realization). He shrugs in response to her eyebrow raise and offers, "It seems like you've had the same ones for a while so I figured you could probably use a new one and the lady in the store said that that one was popular."

"I can see why. It's very nice. Thank you," she says before digging back into the box because she had noticed a piece of lined binder paper in there. It's a note and she reads it before checking, "You're going to get my tires rotated?"

"Yeah. Figured your car probably needs it. I get out early tomorrow and Hank has something going on in the afternoon so I don't have to work so I figured I'd come by your work and pick up the car and take it to get that done. And then I'll change your oil sometime this week too because I'm pretty sure you're almost a thousand miles past when you were supposed to have it done," he explains.

"It's only two hundred," she corrects, "but thank you. I do really need my tires rotated, I think it's been years since I've gotten that done and obviously I've been having trouble finding the time to get the oil changed." She puts the note and the shirt back in the box and adds it to the pile of her other unwrapped gifts. Seeming unable to wait any longer she questions, "Do I get my other gift now? What is it this time?"

Right, he almost forgot about that for a second. He gets up and heads to his room as he calls, "You'll find out in a second."

Quinn's utterly confused and it must show on her face because May explains to her, "Since I got him his guitar a few years ago, every year on my birthday and for Hanukah Noah learns a song by the best musician ever, Neil Diamond, and plays it for me."

Before Quinn can respond (mostly because she's not thinking very quickly at the moment, caught up in the thought of how sweet of a tradition it was Puck had with his mom) May continues, "You should join him on whatever song he's doing this time. You're in glee club with him so I know you can sing, but I haven't gotten to hear you yet."

"I don't know any Neil Diamond songs," Quinn says, which is sort of a lie considering she knows "Sweet Caroline" by heart now.

But May's not listening anyway as Puck walks back into the room with his guitar and May tells him, "Print out some lyrics for whatever song you're doing so Quinn can join you. I want to hear _both_ of you sing."

It looks like May might have been listening because she certainly found a way around Quinn's previous objection. And she has a feeling any more reasons she comes up with will be thwarted too so she might as well just give in even though trying to participate in singing something she doesn't know seems like a recipe for ruining a song that Puck probably worked hard on to learn for his mom. But if May was insisting then she supposed she had to try and do this.

Puck's not surprised by his mom's request, which makes him think that he probably should have seen it coming and picked a song that was meant for more than one person to sing. Oh well though, his mom tended to like Neil Diamond no matter what.

He does as his mom asked and prints out some lyrics for Quinn quickly. He also highlights lines that would work better to have someone join in (which are few because it's not that long of a song) and hands them over to Quinn explaining what he did.

"Ready?" he checks with Quinn.

"Sure," she says because there's really not much she can do to be ready except read the lyrics she's been given and she's already done that.

May is still in her chair, Kelyn on the floor next to her, with Puck standing across the room from them and Quinn looking worried standing a foot to his right.

Puck begins playing the opening chords and then singing after only a few seconds:

_Cracklin' Rosie, get on board  
We're gonna ride till there ain't no more to go  
Taking it slow  
Lord, don't you know  
Have me a time with a poor man's lady  
Hitchin' on a twilight train  
Ain't nothing here that I care to take along  
Maybe a song  
To sing when I want  
Don't need to say please to no man for a happy tune _

May immediately smiles brightly recognizing the song (her fourth favorite of Neil's) and stands up to sway to the music, pulling Kelyn up with her because she wasn't going to dance alone. Kelyn doesn't object, she likes to dance- though her dancing is a little more enthusiastic than the beat of the music.

_Oh, I love my Rosie_ child Puck sings, and then he has Quinn join him for the next line:_**You got the way to make me happy**_

_You and me, we go in style  
Cracklin' Rose you're a store-bought woman  
You make me sing like a guitar hummin'  
So hang on to me, girl  
Our song keeps runnin' on _

_**Play it now  
Play it now  
Play it now**__, my baby _

He has Quinn join him again on the three "play it now"s and the third and fourth lines of the next verse.

_Cracklin' Rosie, make me a smile  
Girl if it lasts for an hour, that's all right  
__**We got all night  
To set the world right**__  
Find us a dream that don't asks no questions, yeah _

_Oh, I love my Rosie child  
__**You got the way to make me happy**__  
You and me, we go in style  
Cracklin' Rosie, you're a store-bought woman  
You make me sing like a guitar hummin'  
So hang on to me, girl  
Our song keeps runnin' on _

_**Play it now  
Play it now  
Play it now**__, my baby_

_Cracklin' Rosie, make me a smile  
God if it lasts for an hour, that's all right  
__**We got all night  
To set the world right**__  
Find us a dream that don't asks no questions, yeah _

Puck sings the "ba ba ba's" at the end and finds not only Quinn singing along with him, but his mom and sister enthusiastically joining in as they spun each other around the room. Normally he would have found their "dancing" kind of funny given all of the stumbling that went along with it, but he barely noticed it throughout the song. The first line he had Quinn sing with him, she smiled and looked at him when she did it and it was a true miracle that he managed to remember the next line of lyrics and next chords to be played. Actually it was a miracle he made it through the whole song because she kept smiling and it was mighty hard to think or do anything in the face of that, the desire to stop everything he was doing and just kiss her more than a little overwhelming.

When Puck had given her the lyrics and said he highlighted what she could sing too, Quinn had gone straight to reading the first highlighted line. At first she thought that this was another thing he was doing to prove something to her. She knew that a lot (if not all) the changes he had made to his life lately had been because he was trying to prove to her that he was in their situation completely (couldn't exactly be equal since he couldn't have the baby too), that he was capable of being an important factor in her decisions about the future. As much as she had appreciated all of his efforts, once she read the rest of the lyrics and he started playing the song, she realized that none of this was for her and it made her happy. This was just what he did- twice a year he showed his appreciation for his mom and her gift of getting him a guitar by playing some popular tune by her favorite artist. The fact that he didn't make a change to be that good, that it had been a part of him longer than she knew him, that made her elated. It was an even bigger sign than the changes he had been making that he was the good guy she had come to think he was while they spent that time together at Foster's. It was another sign that maybe the things that had happened before that broke her heart had truly just been mistakes. At heart, maybe he was a great guy deserving of having her trust again. So she smiles at him through the entire song, unable to help it, because even if she's not supposed to be thinking about the future, all of these thoughts make her feel hopeful and happy.

After the song is over, May catches her breath and declares it time for dessert. Everyone grabs a slice of pie and a donut and heads back to the living room.

May turns on the TV and heads for their box of DVD's as she asks, "Okay, which one this year?"

"The last one," Kelyn replies, to which Puck groans.

Quinn's completely lost as to what's going on and since no one is explaining she asks, "Last what?"

"Oh," May says realizing she had neglected to explain, "we watch one of the _Star Wars_ movies on the last night of Hanukah. It's been a tradition since Puck was in elementary school and Kelyn was a newborn. Kel was sick the last night of Hanukah so we stayed home instead of going to my mother in law's as had been tradition. After she had been crying for about an hour, nothing I tried to get her to stop working, the first _Star Wars_ movie came on the TV and that music at the beginning…it made her stop crying. So we all ended up watching the whole thing and then we just kept doing it, kept watching one of the movies every year." She scans over the titles again before asking, "Do you have a preference of which one to watch? We have all of them."

Quinn shakes her head as she answers, "No. I've never seen any of them."

May's eyes go wide as both of her children's brows furrow. She asks the question they're all thinking, "You've never seen a _Star Wars _movie?"

Quinn shakes her head again. She offers by way of explaining not having seen any of the movies, "My parents had restrictions about movies, which I broke but…it made seeing movies that didn't fit their requirements difficult sometimes."

"Oh," May responds. She doesn't know what else to say. Asking anything more or commenting on Quinn's response would be, in a way, continuing to talk about her parents, which wasn't a happy topic. So she simply changes back to the previous topic and asks her kids, "So should we start her on the first movie made or the one that, in their timeline, technically occurred earliest?"

It's a long debate that follows, but eventually the three of them manage to settle on starting Quinn with _Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace_ and return to enjoying their desserts.

An hour into the movie, Quinn's asleep. Sitting on the couch with Kelyn to her right and Puck to her left (practically in the same place next to him that she had sat on this couch the very first time she was in this apartment), she had drifted off to sleep, her head rolling down and slightly left as eyes eventually closed heavily.

Puck notices about five minutes later and whispers (not too quietly) to his mom, "Should we wake her? Or stop it and wait for her to wake up? Or-"

"Ah, just let her sleep," May waves off, "you both have had a really long week. You could do with more sleep too."

"Stop talking. I'm trying to watch," Kelyn orders.

"You've seen it like a dozen times," Puck reminds her.

Kelyn glares at him in return and he gives up talking. His mom had a point about Quinn probably needing more sleep and talking could wake her so he stayed quiet the rest of the movie.

By the time the movie ends, Kelyn has fallen asleep. After carrying her to her room and putting her to bed, Puck comes back out to the living room where his mom is tiding up and asks with a gesture to Quinn, "Should we leave her there or wake her up?"

May considers it for a second before responding, "I hate the idea of waking her, but tomorrow's a school day, don't you think she'd need to be home to get ready and probably prefer spending the night in her own bed?"

"Yeah she probably would. I'll wake her," Puck concludes.

May heads to the kitchen with her hands full of dirty dessert plates, but pauses to watch her son look stumped by the prospect of waking up the girl on the couch. She stands there watching until he finally takes a deep breath, leans in, places his hand on Quinn's shoulder, and gives it a gentle shake. She continues her way to the kitchen sink then, giving them a bit of privacy.

Quinn awakes with a start, making Puck draw his hand away and stand up away from her.

"You fell asleep," he tells her just in case it wasn't clear and she thought something weird was going on, "and rather than continuing to sleep on our old couch I figured you'd probably want to go home to your own bed."

"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," she says through a yawn.

Realizing that sleeping equaled tired, Puck offers, "I can drive you home if you're too tired. Then I could just pick you up in the morning to bring you back to get your car. It'd be no problem. You really shouldn't be driving tired."

It was a very nice gesture, but she knew she'd be fine making the seven-minute drive. She was awake now (probably for the rest of the night because that would just be her kind of luck) so she'd make it home fine, she was certain of that.

Puck gathers up her gifts as she says good night to May and thanks her again for everything. They both get their coats and head out the door to her car.

She asks him how the movie ended and he tries to explain it, but since she seems confused by his explanation he settles on telling her she'll have to see it again- all the way through next time.

He puts her gifts in the trunk of her car and closes some of the space between them as she stands next to her driver's side door.

He doesn't know if this is a good idea, the fact that he's nervous as hell right now tells him it probably isn't, but the other day his mom remarked that at some point he might want to try going on a date with the girl having his baby, since they hadn't seemed to get to that yet. Given everything they've been through just to get here, he didn't think a "date" was really where they were at (yet), but he forces himself to blurt out his alternative idea (a pre-dating type thing, he thinks), "I was thinking of going to visit Addie sometime this week, take her a little holiday gift. Do you want to maybe go out there too?"

"Yes," she responds quickly (not entirely sure where the speed of her answer came from). She smiles, a little embarrassed, but also happy. After the big sign earlier that night about Puck being a good guy according to his _true_ nature, she was glad to have the chance to spend more time with him (maybe these were the kind of changes Addie mentioned- the kind of thing that could effect her options for the future).

When she gets back to actually thinking instead of just being pleased after a few seconds, Quinn realizes, "As long as you're not planning on going Monday through Wednesday night because I'm working four to ten."

"Didn't really have a plan so Thursday would work for me if that's when you're free," he answers and wonders if saying he didn't have a plan could be taken negatively somehow. All of this relationship/trying to have a relationship stuff was really getting taxing on his mind. It kept him thinking and worrying and considering stuff all the time.

"Thursday would be great," she responds.

It wasn't his birthday or post-celebration of his birthday and she didn't know if it was smart to do something that may make it something they just do for no reason, but she hugs him anyway. For seven Mississippi's she wraps her arms around him, feels his arms around her, leans her head on his chest and hears his heart beat (and feels like she doesn't want to let go- even if she's still too scared to admit that to herself).

She pulls away and says smiling shyly, "Goodnight."

"Yeah, goodnight," he repeats. "See you tomorrow," he adds because after all the changes between them, all the progress made, he still likes that he can say that he's going to see her tomorrow (and still smiles every time he says it).

"Yeah, see you tomorrow," she returns as she gets in her car (smiling because the idea of seeing him is starting to be the best thing about her life at the moment).

(Here's something you should know: When Quinn fell asleep on the couch she had a dream. She dreamt of another Hanukah with homemade decorations, May's brisket, and _Star Wars_ after opening gifts. She doesn't remember all the details when she wakes up- like whether or not she's a mother in the dream or a girl who never had the possibility of being one at sixteen. The details don't matter much right now anyway though. The future is a long way off and she has a lot of obstacles to face between then and now.)

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**A/N: I hope you enjoyed the chapter!**

**Next chapter title:** _This season you're all that I need_ from "All I Want for Christmas is Us," by Jason Mraz and Tristan Prettyman.

**Thank you for reading, remember the contest, and PLEASE REVIEW!**

**Oh and a very, very belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!  
**


	17. Chapter 15, Part 1

**A/N: **I know, I'm an awful person. I haven't updated in forever and I suck for that. *Insert lots of long stories about life getting in the way of any time to write here.* I'm sure most or all of you don't want to hear any of those long stories though so I'll skip them so you can get to reading quicker. Though if you are interested, I did post some updates on what was delaying me on my profile.

This chapter turned out so ridiculously massive. This first part is over fifty pages and the second part will be over seventy. So the bright side of my long delay in updating is that you're about to have tons of reading to get to with this story. Also, the second part should be up in the next few days-depending on how long Apple decides to keep my computer which they're taking from me to, *fingers crossed,* finally fix about twenty minutes after I post this.

I should have probably mentioned this before, but when I picture Jessica, even though they don't really look alike at all, for some reason I always see Becki Newton- who may be known to some of you as Amanda from _Ugly Betty_ or as that girl that was ever so briefly Louis' girl friend in _August Rush_.

Finally, a couple people (one in each category) participated in that contest I mentioned last time and the winners were **Ohladybright** for her awesome two videos and **unspeakabledesire** for her picture perfect fan art. Links to their work can be found on my profile for anyone who wants to check it out (do so, it's fantastic). Congrats ladies!

Okay, I'll shut up now and let you read. I hope you enjoy the chapter and I'm so very sorry for the great delay in between posts.

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**Cheated Hearts **

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_XV. This season you're all that I need_

(Here's something you should know: As great as Hanukah was, Christmas, in a way, is better and New Years is definitely better…for a while.)

Quinn wakes up late Monday morning and has to rush to school. She slept through her alarm because she was exhausted not only from the busy week/week and a half she had been having, but also because something just seemed to be keeping her awake (it wasn't last night with Puck…really, it wasn't). Luckily she manages to make it to her first final on time despite having to rush.

They get a thirty-minute break in between finals and Quinn heads to the choir room because she had told Kurt she'd meet him there. She's not surprised to see Kurt and Mercedes there, nor Artie or Tina. But she is surprised to see Puck there…and apparently taking orders?

He looks up from writing on his hand when she comes in and asks, "You want anything from 7-11? I'm making a food run. The cafeteria's selling crap."

"But we're not allowed off campus on finals days," Quinn points out. She thought he was avoiding doing things that could get him in trouble.

"That's what I said," Mercedes says, "but I'm hungry so hopefully he doesn't get caught because I want my food."

"And I think I'll take some Ho-Ho's and an orange juice," Artie tells Puck, finally making a decision after much thought.

Puck adds it to his list, going on to his wrist because it was getting so long.

Quinn notices the length of the list as she comes up beside him and comments, "You can't get all of that by yourself and sneak back on campus with it- that is if you manage to get off campus without getting caught in the first place."

"I'll go with you," Artie eagerly volunteers. He adds excitedly, "I've never snuck off campus before. You're a pro at it, right? We definitely won't get caught?"

"Nope. Trust me. I've done this hundreds of times," Puck promises. What Artie said gives Puck pause and he asks, "Have any of you ever snuck off campus before? Raise your hand if you haven't." As Puck thought, everyone raises their hand…except Quinn. He adds to her, "Getting off because you were doing something Cheerio or Sylvester related doesn't count." Her eyes narrow at him (how did he know that that was how she had been off campus during school before?) and she reluctantly raises her hand like the rest. Puck claps his hands together and declares, "Okay, we're all going."

While most of them look pleased at the turn of events, Quinn questions, "What?"

Puck shrugs and offers, "Everyone should get to experience sneaking off campus at least once during high school- and I can get everyone off and back on without getting in trouble. Plus I really don't want to have to carry everyone's stuff back so now everyone can just get whatever they want." He says to the group at large, "Let's go."

He heads out, Tina and Artie closely trailing behind him, as Quinn splutters in response. What happened to Puck being more responsible? This didn't seem like a smart thing to do at all. (Was this another one-eighty for him? It crossed her mind, made her worry.)

"Come on Q," Kurt says looping his arm through Quinn's and tugging her along, Mercedes on his other arm.

"But-" she begins anxiously.

"I know," Kurt cuts her off, "it seems like a stupid idea, but I want to go anyway."

"And I'm hungry," Mercedes adds her reason for tagging along as they followed Puck and Tina and Artie through the halls.

After a handful of seconds of following Puck, Kurt checks with Quinn, "Are you still going to come if I let go of your arm?"

This seems like a bad idea. For her to participate in, for anyone else to go along with, for Puck to have started. But she does want to see what'll happen and she doesn't want to be left behind and she is hungry. So she answers, "Yes. Apparently I'm going."

"Good because I need to tie my shoe before I trip. Don't wait up," Kurt says as he lets go and stops and bend over to fix his shoe.

Quinn continues following with Mercedes and they quickly find themselves caught up and side-by-side with everyone else.

"You're actually coming?" Puck asks her. Given that she seemed to disapprove he was kind of surprised.

"I was running late this morning and I didn't have much time to eat and it seems like she already has your eating habits because I'm really hungry," Quinn responds- avoiding saying that she was also going because she suspected he was going to get everyone in trouble she felt the need to come along and try and prevent that from happening.

"If she had my eating habits and you didn't eat breakfast you'd be more than just really hungry," he responds because he's skipped breakfast before and he's usually so starving by mid-first period that he has to take the bathroom pass and sneak off campus to grab some breakfast.

"My jeans are literally being held together by a rubber band and a paperclip- that didn't happen because she has my appetite, that's all yours," Quinn retorts and then realizes what she admitted. She had sworn to herself in her head when she realized the only way these pants would fit this morning was with some creative rigging so she had vehemently not planned on admitting to their current state.

Puck snickers a little (he can't help it) and argues, "First- what eating habits could she get from you? Your _non_-appetite? And second, why didn't you just wear some of the stuff your sister sent? I thought you said she sent you like half a dozen pairs of pants you could use?"

She sighs frustratedly, explaining the inconvenient situation she had found herself in this morning, "They smell musty. I think the box may have gotten damp during shipping at some point. I haven't had time to do laundry- not until this afternoon, so I was left with limited options this morning."

Puck was about to ask why it mattered what her pants smelt like for four and a half hours of school. It's not like anyone would be able to tell, right? This thought, fortunately for him, gets interrupted though.

As they neared the exit on the east side of the school, their group, among a throng of students, passed by Crystal- one of the hall monitors. And she gave Puck a little nod. Quinn, no longer even remembering that they were in the middle of a conversation (even if it was a rather pointless one), asks urgently, "Why did Crystal the hall monitor just nod at you?"

"Why? Jealous?" he returns. Sometimes his natural cockiness just bursts out of him.

"No," she returns unconvincingly. (Now that he'd put that idea in her head she wondered if Crystal was one of the women he slept with during his older-lady phase that she heard about- though Crystal really didn't seem like his type, but sometimes he had been known not to discriminate). "I'm just curious," she offers, "here we are about to go out an exit and leave campus when we're not supposed to and you're getting a nod from someone who's supposed to make sure we stay here."

Sometimes it was kind of annoying that she was smart. He hadn't planned on divulging this to anyone, it kind of took some of the fun out of it. He glances around and makes sure the rest of them are caught up in conversation with each other and not too close so that they may easily over hear, which they are, and tells her, "Let's just say I have an arrangement with the hall monitors."

"What do you mean?" she asks, because now she's really starting to get the feeling that there's an important reason why he wasn't worried about getting caught and if there is she needs to know it. If he wasn't reverting to his old-self here, she needed to know.

He sighs, resigns himself to being honest despite not really wanting to, and explains, "Freshman year I caught Jorge doing crack in the bathroom and since I don't go passing that fact around, Jorge is lax in making sure I follow any rules. From there, once I was already out of class when I wasn't supposed to be, I've caught all the hall monitors doing stuff that they could lose their job over should it get around. Like Crystal- she's the one that actually did that graffiti about Sylvester on the bleachers last year, that's why I'm one of the few people who never thought you did it."

"People think I did that?" that was news to her. Sure she had drawn things where she wasn't supposed to a few times (bathroom walls, locker room walls, etc.), but she was smart enough to do it in enclosed spaces with locks on the doors as to not get caught. People thought she wrote something about Coach Sylvester in an open space? They really must not think she's very smart.

"Pretty much everyone," he answers.

She considers not asking, worried of what it could lead him to think. But she wants to know too badly, so she questions, "So there's no risk involved in this? You can get off and on campus and the hall monitors will make sure no one knows?"

"Yep," he confirms. This probably isn't the time, or the place, and she may not be ready for this type of conversation, but since this seems like the right situation to address it he figures he should try to mention it. He's knows she knows that he's been trying to be more responsible, not get into trouble, but they've never talked about why. So he tells her quickly (hoping she won't stop him because maybe she does know what she wants in the end and it'll make all this irrelevant), "I'm not going get in trouble for anything- or at least I've been trying really hard not to do anything that will get me into trouble. I know you'll be deciding what to do about the baby and I realized that if you keep her and let me be involved, I don't want her to have some…screw up as a dad. I don't want her to know that I've thrown people in dumpsters or been a bully because then she could feel the same way about me that I feel about my dad- thinking I'm just a jackass. I wasn't going to do anything differently until after you made a decision or she was born, but my mom made the point that changing is hard and it'd take time. I saw that kid wearing a cape last Friday at school and it was so hard not to push him into the lockers- old habits. I've managed to avoid doing stuff that I know will get me into trouble though for a while now."

Quinn knew that his efforts to not fight or get in trouble at school had to do with her and/or the baby, but actually hearing why made changes to be more responsible lately made it mean more than it had before. She felt awful, because she didn't know if any of his changes would matter in the end. But she also felt…happy. He cared enough about the idea of being a father that he was already trying to make sure he wouldn't be a bad one, that he wouldn't be anything like the only example of a father he knew. She wanted say something to him. Maybe "Thank you," or "No matter what ends up happening, I think you're doing the right thing." She didn't like either one of them, but she just wanted to say something that expressed how appreciative she was of his effort and change.

She's saved/prevented from coming up with a response when, as they've all just quickly stepped outside, Puck orders, "Run."

"What?" Kurt asks. Since when was running involved in this little adventure?

Very quickly, Puck explains, "We made it out of the school fine, but now we need to not get caught leaving campus so time to run. Artie, want me to handle the chair?"

Artie glances at Tina, they can apparently communicate silently, and he tells him sure, he doesn't want Tina to have to push him.

Puck takes hold of Artie's wheelchair and starts running as fast as he can through the back parking lot and to the end of the block so they can get around the corner and be out of sight (and right across the street from their destination).

Everyone else watches for a second, wondering what they got themselves into, before realizing that they really don't want to get caught and it was probably best to listen to the expert in not getting caught. They run.

Quinn's surprised when she finds herself nearly caught up with Puck and Artie and very far ahead of Tina, Mercedes, and Kurt. She had been doing some pregnancy aerobics exercises (okay, only two times so far), but technically she hadn't worked out seriously in months and that combined with the extra bit of weight had her surprised that she managed to do so well with the running.

Tina, Mercedes, and Kurt were also surprised- that they were being beat by a pregnant girl. None of them thought they were in great shape, but glee club could be taxing and they kept up. Having a pregnant girl be several feet in front of them though, was a sort of wake up call… until they all wrote it off that she isn't _that_ pregnant and she was pretty athletic not that long ago and had been so for years.

They make it to the end of the block and around the corner without getting caught and finally get to slow down. Everyone makes their purchases when they get to the store and they all walk back to school slowly as they partake in their snacks and make small talk. Quinn wonders if Puck seeming to so easily get along with everyone, talk like they don't have a history of bully and bullied, was because of the party she threw him with them or if that had been going on for a while and she just didn't notice it until now.

"Hold up," Puck tells them as they get back on campus and near the exit they had gone through. He gets his phone out, texts something quickly, and a minute later says, "Okay it's clear. Let's go."

As they re-enter the school Quinn's thinking of how she should have trusted Puck. He said there wouldn't be any risk involved and there hadn't been. And just as that thought is passing through her mind, Sue Sylvester pops up right in front of them, coming out of nowhere.

"Well, well, what do we have here? Half of Schuester's glee club sneaking off campus to get more food that'll make you even less attractive," Coach Sylvester says with a smirk.

"Um," Kurt dares to stumble, "in addition to being in Mr. Schue's glee club, I'd just like to remind you that Mercedes and I are part of your Cheerios."

"A part I could win Nationals without. Schuester, however, can't afford to lose you. Sorry lady, but you'll just have to be sacrificed with the others to Principal Figgins," Sue tells him with delight.

Quinn had been in the back of the group (with Puck), but she takes a step forward as she offers, "Name starts with a consonant."

"What was that Juno Barbie?" Sue inquires, bored and irritated (she wanted to get to the expulsions she was going to propose to Figgins).

She smirks, much in the evil way Sue does, and says innocently, "Just offering that the name of one of the people on your squad with bad timing's name starts with a consonant. Kind of like how that person you visit every Thursday at four's name starts with a consonant too." She wasn't going to out her about having a sister in an assisted living facility, she felt horrible just about the idea of doing so, but Sue didn't have to know that. This was her future being threatened (and therefore her daughter's as well) and her new friends being threatened, she wasn't just going to go down without a hell of a fight.

Sue looks fearful for a fraction of a second before quickly covering it up with her usual bravado. She says with a fairly believable confidence, "You don't know anything."

"I was your head cheerleader from freshman year on for a reason. It'd be wise of you to remember that," Quinn advises. Sue still seems unconvinced, so she offers, "I have to say, that time you spent in Virginia was very interesting to learn about."

"What happened in Virginia?" Kurt asks, only to recoil when he's met with a glare from Coach Sylvester.

"Do you want me to tell them?" Quinn asks, "Because if you go to Principal Figgins about any of us, if you tell anyone anything about us, I promise everyone will know what happened in Virginia and that will only be the first secret I spill."

"Like you have proof of anything," Sue says, blowing off the threat, "and what do you think will happen then? It'll be my word against yours. Me, who is a respected, award winning member of this community, against you, the pregnant hypocrite. I think you need to remember who you're trying to threaten."

"And I just reminded you to think about who you're dealing with, but you're so quick not to take that advice," Quinn returns. She smiles and continues, "And maybe you're right about how this community sees you and how they see me, but after the tape a certain small town sheriff gave me I doubt you'll ever be seen the same way again."

The bell rings and Quinn declares, "I'm going to class." She turns to her companions and tells them, "You should too. She can't do anything about us being off campus. Good luck on your finals."

Quinn walks away with her head held high. She was finding that there was a purpose for the person she had spent so long trying to be, it was just a different purpose than she had known.

(When Sue first popped up in front of them- sneer in place- Quinn's hands flew to her stomach. Normally she made a special effort not to touch her slowly expanding stomach at school, not wanting to draw any extra attention to it. But when Sue appeared with her typical threatening manner, she didn't think about it, she just did it.)

On her way to her class Quinn gets a text message from everyone she just parted ways with. From both Tina and Mercedes it isn't much more than a thank you.

From Kurt she gets:

_Glad to see you're back to being HBIC, but on my side this time;)_

From Artie she gets:

_Damn gurl! Awesome job putting Sue-devil in her place. See you later!_

And from Puck she gets:

_Evil Jesus Freak- I like it. _

Though the approval from all of them feels really good, it's Puck's message that keeps Quinn smiling all through her AP English final (despite the fact that a large portion of it was on the depressing read _The Grapes of Wrath_).

-o-o-o-

After her final Quinn heads out toward the parking lot. She doesn't have much time, but she's hoping to run into some of the glee club because earlier wasn't much of a goodbye for the day.

Despite knowing Sue for a few years now, it still manages to surprise Quinn when she suddenly finds Brittany and Santana looping their arms around hers and steering her in the direction of Sue's office.

"What's going on?" she asks, trying to pull away from them even though she knew it was pointless (she had been on the other side of this tactic, it was hard to get away from).

"You tell us," Santana says with what almost looks like a smile, "Sylvester seems really pissed and she told us to come get you and bring you to her. Something good must have happened. What was it?"

"Nothing," Quinn brushes off (if she said it could sound like boasting and she didn't want to get a habit of doing something like that), "Sue just needed a reminder of who she's dealing with."

"Who?" Brittany asks not able to make the connection.

Santana helps her out supplying, "Shamu."

"Oh, right, Quinn," Brittany realizes.

"So you're calling me Shamu now?" Quinn asks tiredly (and telling herself not to be hurt by it because they did this to everyone- it wasn't personal and it didn't mean that they didn't like her).

"Yeah, I wanted to find a word that starts with a "Q" and means fat so it would go with your name, but I couldn't find one so it was either Shamu or Kevin Smith," Santana explains.

"And along with being fat, Kevin Smith is ugly, which you're not. So we decided on Shamu because while she's huge, she's also cute," Brittany finishes.

"You should be grateful, it was really nice of us," Santana tells her.

"I couldn't be happier you've decided to start referring to me as a whale," Quinn responds like she's not pleased by it, but that's just her playing along because she knows that it was actually pretty nice for them. But she knows them well and if she actually acts glad they'd probably take it back so she holds her smile for later.

They deliver her to Sue's office and leave her alone.

Sue whips around in her chair in a manner intended to be threatening. "Q, nice of you to come visit me," she begins and Quinn knows better than to waste time correcting her. "You know your little uprising earlier got me thinking. You're an intelligent girl Q, even if you have made some obviously stupid decisions. And that tells me that you're smart enough to recognize an opportunity when you have one and take advantage of anything you can."

"You're going to bribe me to keep my mouth shut?" Quinn asks with a raised eyebrow, pretty sure she's correctly caught on to Sue's meaning.

"Not exactly," Sue corrects, "You're far from the only person who's done some digging on me so I'm not worried about what you know or what you could say. What I want to buy from you are the names of the people who you believe are hindering my team's routines. I don't think you're right in anyone you could come up with, but as you know by now, I put winning above everything else so even though I doubt the value of your information, I want it all the same. Just tell me what you want in return."

Quinn had actually already thought that she'd probably end up using her opinion of the squad as leverage like this with Sue eventually so there's barely a pause between Sue's offer and Quinn's response. She tells her, "I want all the swag the Cheerio's get for the rest of the year. And I want you to make me your substitute coach when you take your annual post-Nationals vacation."

Sue's eyes turn thoughtful as she speculates, "You could ask to be back on the squad. In your condition you couldn't do much, but it could give you back a bit of your status. Make this place easier to bear." She doesn't give Quinn the chance to respond before continuing, "Instead you're choosing things that will help you and your fetus survive- money and things you can sell for money."

In the way Sue says it, it almost sounds like a compliment. But Quinn knows better than to think that's an accurate idea so she shrugs in response and offers, "Like you said, I'm an intelligent girl. I know how to make the right choices."

"And yet you're pregnant. Maybe in the future you should try not to follow your hormones," Sue returns.

"It wasn't my hormones I was following," Quinn confesses only to realize that she had never said anything like that out loud to anyone other than her sister (and even then she wasn't quite confessing the same thing). When she had re-capped how she decided spending the night with Puck was a good idea for her sister, she glossed over most of the night and let her sister assume things just like Sue had. She doesn't know why she was honest now.

Sue's lips quirk in peculiar way and she glances at the surface of her desk. She doesn't comment (and Quinn doesn't know whether she's being nice by doing it or if she doesn't care enough to). Instead, she reminds, "You could have asked me to leave your glee club alone."

"Even if you had agreed to that, you never would have lived up to it," Quinn replies knowingly.

"Of course not," Sue agrees with a small chuckle. She plays with a pen on her desk for a second before putting it down, meeting Quinn's eyes, and finally saying, "You have a deal. Every time we get any swag I'll have one of the girls deliver it to you and I'll tell Figgins tomorrow that you're my first choice as a sub in my absence."

Quinn knows she should probably wait for Sue to come through on one or both promises before she divulges the names, but she also knows that Sue has assumed she'd get them now. She knows Coach Sylvester is going to be mad about this, but she also knows better than to trust that Sue Sylvester will keep her word. So she instructs, "Good. Have Principle Figgins confirm that change with me tomorrow and put together all of the swag you currently have left over for me to pick up tomorrow and I'll provide you with the names."

Sue simply stares at her for a long time before finally taking in a loud breath and conceding, "Fine."

Quinn tries not to smile, knowing that showing that anything Sue was doing was making her happy would make Sue change her mind or take something/everything back. But as she finally heads out to her car (quickly because she was supposed to have lunch with her sister over video chat in ten minutes), she smiles because this was probably the best end-result of having information over Sue Sylvester that she could have hoped for.

-o-o-o-

"Yeah, yay lil' sis for putting that super bitchy sounding coach in her place, but what happened to you filling me in on the rest of Hanukah? You barely had time to talk to me for over a week and one of the big reasons we were doing this whole video chat lunch was for you to spill the details so can you get that that already?" Jessica says impatiently.

"We've only been talking for," Quinn glances at the time on her computer screen and stops herself from continuing because she hadn't expected that it had been that long, it kind of contradicted the point she was just about to make.

"Forty-five minutes," Jessica supplies for her, "and all we've done in that time is talk about me and you told me about your morning."

"Well sorry for actually wanting to know what's been going on with you. You're only my sister. And you just had surgery last week," Quinn retorts.

"And yet you told me to stop talking. You practically screamed it," Jess points out.

Quinn balks at the screen, reminding, "That was only because you started talking about your and Eric's…you know…."

"Sex life," Jessica completes for her, "and you know for a girl who got pregnant in her teens you're kind of a prude."

"When it comes to hearing about my sister and her husband, yes, I'm a prude," Quinn confirmed.

As if Quinn hadn't said anything, Jess continues, "And you'd think you'd care that the massive cast covering my broken leg has taken a toll on my sex life with my husband. I mean, the thing goes up to high-thigh. It's really hard to maneuver-"

"Stop, stop, stop, stop," Quinn begs (not for the first time- though at least this time her sister didn't make it to positions).

Jessica rolls her eyes, but agrees, "Fine." She had something else she wanted to talk about anyway, "So tell me about all your time with Puck and his family."

"We talked at least every morning throughout Hanukah and I already told you pretty much everything. It wasn't a big deal," Quinn says knowing that she's essentially lying.

"You told me what you ate for dinner each night, about Puck not telling you it was his birthday, very little about how there came to be a surprise party for Puck, and what gifts you were given. That's barely anything. You spent eight nights there and you're trying to tell me that was everything?" Jessica argues.

Quinn chews her lower lip. She doesn't want to lie to her sister, she just hadn't really felt like sharing _everything_. "No," she confesses, "that wasn't everything. The surprise party for Puck was kind of my idea. I just felt guilty. I know we both made decisions that got us in our situation, but I'm the one that dragged Finn into it. It's my fault his best friend was so hurt by everything, why he's not speaking to him. I felt bad about Puck not being able to have Finn celebrate his birthday with him like he usually does, so I came up with the idea to have a party- so he'd at least have some people to celebrate his birthday with."

_Did he really want any one else?_ Jessica wanted to ask because she had been starting to get the idea that Puck was still definitely very into Quinn for a while now. But she had learned from experience that those types of comments tended to be conversation killers with Quinn. So instead Jessica asks, "And why didn't you just tell me that when we talked Saturday or yesterday?"

"I didn't want you to think it meant more than it did," Quinn answers because she had noticed that her sister had a tendency to do that where Puck was concerned and she didn't feel like dealing with that right now (or ever maybe).

Well since Quinn had been the one to mention it, Jessica checks, "Did it mean more than you said?"

"No," Quinn responds too quickly.

"Fine," Jessica pretends to accept, "I believe you did it because you feel bad about Puck losing a friend." She's quick to continue, "What else happened that you haven't told me about?"

"Nothing," Quinn tells her and she feels bad about that, but she really doesn't feel like sharing _more _and especially not the one thing she's been holding off on mentioning for slightly over a week now.

"Liar," Jessica returns.

Her sister is clearly on to her so Quinn pulls out an old reliable tactic. She squints at the screen and comments, "Jess, you know your natural hair color is showing, right?"

"Well I haven't exactly been able to hobble my way into a salon lately. Why did I have to be cursed with mom's natural hair color? It's so not fair that you're naturally blonde-" Jessica stops abruptly, her eyes widen, and she points at the screen accusingly, "OH no, that's not going to work. You're not tricking me into forgetting what I asked you by changing the topic to my hair. Which, by the way, I am getting fixed. My friend Sherri is coming over Thursday to dye it. Now answer my question, what else happened last week?"

Quinn sighs. She supposes she really should just tell her sister, she knows she can't hold off much longer anyway. "I got my work schedule for the whole month and I'm working until closing on Christmas Eve and first thing in the morning the day after Christmas," she confesses regretfully.

"You can't come for Christmas like we thought you'd be able to," Jessica puts together. That was much sadder news than she was expecting (she thought Quinn was going to confess to some kind of physical contact with Puck or to flirting with him). She admits, "I kind of thought your job would make it impossible for you to come. But it's okay. You need money and the more you work, the more you earn. And we'll just have to see each other later. I get this uber hindering cast off at the end of January. As for Christmas…well, I don't know what to do, but I'm going to make sure you don't spend it alone."

"You don't have to do that," Quinn tells her, "It's only a day. And spending Christmas alone is hardly the most difficult thing lately."

Jessica hesitated for a second, unsure if she was interpreting Quinn's words correctly. She was pretty sure she was, just unsure that it was necessary to comment. She's not her parents though, she doesn't like to let things go or get glossed over, so she asks, "I thought you said you were taking Addie's advice and not thinking about the future right now?"

"I am trying not to," Quinn confirms and admits, "but it doesn't change the fact that much harder things than Christmas alone are still ahead of me."

"And by then I promise I'll be around to help you through everything. Even if my leg is still in the same cast, even if both of my legs are in casts, I'm going to be around," Jessica swears.

"Thank you," Quinn says sincerely, grateful for everything her sister has done and said to support her lately.

Failing at her attempted casual tone, Jess asks, "So whatever happened to you giving me your friends' phone numbers?"

"I never agreed to that," Quinn reminds, "it'd be weird. My older sister calling my new friends to…check up on me?"

"Well I can't exactly come there and meet them, how else am I supposed to get to know the people in your life?" Jessica asks. Normally, she would have left her sister's social life alone. She remembers high school and knows how awkward it would have been to have a family member butting in. But Quinn's pregnant and she doesn't have their parents to depend on at all, this isn't a normal situation and she feels it's her duty as a sister to make sure Quinn's new friends are really as supportive as she's been describing and to make sure Quinn's not sugar coating things for her about how her life is going.

"You can get to know them when you meet them," Quinn returns because as much as she loves her sister and how much she cares, the idea of her calling her new friends to check up on her (because she knows that would be Jess' objective) seems really sad and she really doesn't need anything else to make her appear like that much of a loser.

"Fine," Jessica agrees. She had already found everyone's full names thanks to an article that was in the Lima paper after her sister's glee club's sectionals win, she had just hoped she'd get Quinn's approval and not have to google her new friends.

Like last time Jessica brought this up, she dropped it pretty easy. That made Quinn weary, but she figured that that probably meant that Jess was planning on bringing it up again and that was all.

Jessica, looking mischievous, raises an eyebrow as she checks (again), "So really, nothing else happened with you and Puck over Hanukah?"

"You know, I should really study for my finals tomorrow before I have to leave for work," Quinn says, ignoring her sister's question. She knew the answer was "yes," and she knew that by Thursday night she would tell her sister what would happen then, but for everything else she had a strong desire not to talk about any of it. (It felt like jinxing what seemed to be changing between them to even consider the idea of divulging every detail to someone else. Not to mention, it felt more intimate to keep it to herself/just between the two of them.)

Jessica's eyes light up as she gasps, "That wasn't a no! Something totally happened. And obviously you're not going to tell me right now, but I will get it out of you."

"Bye Jess," Quinn says pointedly with a smile she can't help. She ends the call and spends the rest of the afternoon working very hard to stay focused on studying for the finals she has tomorrow before heading off to work.

-o-o-o-

Puck's afternoon is nice and uneventful. Though he's shocked to realize he would have rather gotten to work with Hank so that maybe he could start working for the guy and not just observing and make some money. He never expected there'd ever be a time in his life where he'd actually want to work but he supposes trying to be responsible must have worked because apparently it's like a natural urge for him now.

Puck's day gets slightly more interesting when he picks Kelyn up from school (might as well not pay for daycare today since he's free) as she hands him a paper and tells him to sign it with their mom's name (she knows he can forge her signature). It's a permission slip to join a girl's football team and it starts a really long argument about why he thinks she shouldn't do that (his most important point being about her asthma- she had had a few attacks since she started dance and soccer, she didn't need to do something else that would create more) and why she says he has to (their mom won't and he still owes her for lying to her about Quinn). They debate all the way until their mom gets home and when she finds out she'll talk to the coach and consider it, but warns Kelyn not to get her hopes up.

As Kelyn sulks in her room, Puck sat at their kitchen table reading the latest Sports Illustrated while his mom made dinner. Eventually, he's interrupted from his reading as May comes over and puts plates on the table as she comments, "I almost grabbed four plates. Funny how quickly something becomes habit."

"Ma'," Puck says with a groan. He decides to give in, just briefly, in hopes that she'd just drop this, "Look, fine, it is weird that she's not here anymore after having her here so many days in a row. Okay? Are you happy now?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," May says innocently. Unable to help herself, she continues, "But if I did I would say that it's about time you actually acknowledged that. You know, maybe if she wasn't working tonight she'd show up again. I think she had a good enough time and feels comfortable with us now that she'd pop by just because she felt like it. And Lord knows we're more welcoming than her parents so who do you think she'd rather go home to?"

"Mom," Puck interrupts firmly and continues once he has her attention, "can you stop with that stuff already? You're getting way ahead of yourself." Not giving her a chance to respond, he picks up his magazine and stomps off to his room. He was getting so tired of his mom talking like everything was already working out perfectly. They had more than five months before the baby was born and that was five months where Quinn could change her mind back to not wanting him involved at all, five months where he could screw up (and if his past was any indication it was less "could" and more "would"). So he really didn't want to hear about how good things were looking now, he couldn't get his hopes up that high.

Meanwhile in the kitchen May sighs as she hears Puck's door slam shut. She considers changing her behavior but quickly decides against it. She was only being optimistic and God knew that given the situation someone needed to be.

-o-o-o-

Tuesday morning looks like it's going to start off badly for Quinn. Still in the parking lot, not even in the building yet, she gets hassled by some jackasses from the hockey team.

She's walking towards the school, books for the finals she's about to take in her hands, and they pass by, knock the books out of her hands, and scamper off laughing their large asses off.

She rolls her eyes at their childishness and hurries to pick up her books and her binder, the contents of which were now everywhere. She's quickly shocked to see someone crouched down next to her, hurriedly picking up papers from her binder off the slightly damp asphalt, and she's even more stunned to realize it's Finn.

Should she say something? He's not saying anything, just pulling her papers into a messy stack.

Her books and binder and some of the papers picked up, she stands back up. He grabs one last paper and does the same and offers the papers to her meeting her eyes for the first time in what feels like forever.

"Thank you," she says gratefully, taking her papers back and hastily shuffling them between her books so she doesn't lose them.

"You're welcome," he responds evenly, politely. He promptly turns around and continues toward the entrance.

Quinn doesn't know what possess her to take the chance, she had been convinced she should respect that Finn didn't want to talk to her anymore and just wait to say anything to him again (another apology is what she'd really like to offer). But she calls after him as he's gotten a few steps away, "Good luck on your physical science final."

He stops and turns around, actually smiling a little, and says, "Thanks," seeming surprised that she still knew his schedule (it's not like it had changed). He hesitates (whether to think over whether he wants to say anything else or just to remember her schedule she's not sure), but returns, "You too, on your history final."

She smiles, very happy to have a good interaction with Finn again, and says, "Thank you."

He's in the school before she's taken more than three steps, having just stayed put for a second thinking about what a positive change this may be. And despite how having her books hit out of her hands by jerks seemed like a bad start to her day, maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all.

-o-o-o-

After her AP U.S. history final Quinn is far less convinced that her day will be good. She guessed on it- a lot- so she's pretty sure that's not going to work out in her favor.

But she thinks of yesterday, how taking control of things that happened to her made her feel really good, and decides that she'll just have to make today better. On that note, she stops by Coach Sylvester's office (who is luckily out) and swipes a little trinket and drops it into a trashcan on her way to her locker.

"Q," she hears behind her suddenly, nearly making her jump at the cold, familiar tone.

Coach Sylvester is standing looking at her sternly. She starts to panic that maybe she was seen in her stealing, which would ruin her plan completely.

Instead of anything bad though, Coach Sylvester holds up a bag and says, "I have your first batch of swag. Tell me the names of the underachieving Cheerios."

Suspiciously, Quinn asks, "I thought we agreed you'd be sending someone from the team for this?"

Sue lets out a bark of a laugh before responding, "Like I'd risk that. What if I happened to send one of the people who you think isn't living up to my standards? I'm not going to trust any of them to provide me with correct information."

Quinn wonders if Coach Sylvester realizes what that implies about how much she must value her opinion. But she's not about to say anything like that to Coach Sylvester so instead she trusts she'll be given her part of the agreement and supplies the names, "Tanya and Ramon- she's always one beat off, his hands are almost always improperly placed when he lifts anyone."

Sue's lips purse for a minute, considering and then she nods, holds out the bag and says, "There's a copy of my request to Figgins to have you as my permanent sub on top."

Quinn takes the bag and before Sue can leave, mentions, "You have a mug that says, "I'm better than you," right?"

"Yes," Sue confirms, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"I thought so. Well, unless someone else does too, those two guys over there," she says pointing out the guys who hassled her this morning (it was lucky they were around, she had never bothered to learn their names), "I saw them dump it in the trash can around the corner a little while ago."

Sue doesn't respond, but Quinn watches as she marches around the corner and then comes back around it with her coffee mug in her hand and proceeds to terrorize the boys Quinn had pointed out.

Distracted by the scene unfolding (the boys looked so scared it seemed like they might wet themselves- it was fantastic), Quinn doesn't notice that Puck has come up to her.

Likewise distracted by Sue's yelling and threatening of two students, he asks, "Uh…headed to the choir room?"

"Yeah," Quinn says turning around and shutting her locker as Coach Sylvester took both boys by the back of their necks and steered them in the direction of Principal Figgins' office.

No longer distracted as they made their way slowly to their destination, Quinn tells Puck happily, "Something that's potentially good happened this morning. My books were hit out of my hands this morning and Finn stopped and helped me pick up my stuff. Not many words were exchanged, but…I think it's a good sign, right?"

"Wait. Who hit your books out of your hands? And is this like a regular thing?" Puck asks, looking ready to hit someone.

"I already took care of them," Quinn promises with a mischievous smirk.

He smiles appreciatively and says, "Right. _Evil_ Jesus Freak." They get to the choir room and he pauses in front of the door instead of opening it. "And you're right. I think it is a good sign, Finn helping you," he says responding to the other part of what she had told him before he opens the door for her.

Everyone that had been on the 7-11 run the previous day is already there, and eating. Artie's mom made them cookies and banana bread. All of which starts disappearing especially quickly when Matt and Mike stop in to hang out with everyone.

At some point during the twenty minute break, as she spends time with her new friends, Quinn realizes that Puck seems to already fit in with everyone completely, which is a bit annoying. First, she's not sure she feels like she's always a part of the group despite how hard she's worked to be, to have these people as real friends. And second, it makes her wonder about the other person who had been working hard to have friends- Rachel. She had assumed Rachel hadn't been spending between finals breaks with them because she was with Finn (who wouldn't want to be with all of them if he didn't have to be). But now she's unsure if that was really the reason or if maybe Saturday night hadn't been as successful as she thought and maybe no one invited Rachel. She'll definitely have to look into that.

After school for Quinn is consumed by another video chat lunch with Jessica (who thankfully doesn't bug her about the same old things and lets them talk about new stuff- like how Jess should dye her hair this time). Then she studies for the finals she has tomorrow and goes to work. It's already a mundane routine, but it's nice to have it. It keeps her mind off of the things she's not supposed to be thinking about.

Making today even better, Quinn gets a surprise after she's been at work nearly three hours that helps keep her as distracted as she needs to be. Matt and Mike approach the gift-wrap counter smiling.

"Hey Quinn," Matt greets and Mike echoes.

"Hi guys," she returns. They don't seem to have any bags so it doesn't seem like they're shopping and definitely doesn't seem like they have anything they need wrapped. "What brings you here tonight?"

"We have easy finals tomorrow so we figured maybe we'd get an early start on some Christmas shopping," Mike answers.

She does another once over of them, again seeing that they clearly don't have any bags on them, and questions, "Is shopping not going well?"

"I got him that jacket," Mike says, pointing at Matt's new faux leather jacket.

"And I got him that hoodie," Matt returns, pointing at Mike's new Echo sweatshirt.

"Nice," Quinn compliments. She asks what seems to be the obvious question, "But what about your parents," she adds to Matt, "or your brother and sister. What are you going to get them?"

"We have no idea," Matt says honestly.

"Which is why we're taking a break to grab something to eat," Mike picks up.

"And we knew you worked here now so we thought we'd see if you get a dinner break so you could come too," Matt finishes.

Lately, Quinn had been wondering if some people being nice to her (like Kurt, Artie, and Rachel inviting her to dinner, Artie's parents inviting her to mass, Mercedes inviting her to lunch, etc.) was because they felt sorry for her. She knew that no matter what all the people who had been especially kind to her were real friends of hers now, but still, it nagged at her that perhaps all initial acts of kindness had been out of pity. She's too alone to turn something down just on the possibility of pity though so she accepts, "One of the other women is on her dinner break now, but she should be back in about ten minutes. I could meet you then."

"Great, we'll be in the food court," Matt tells her before he and Mike head off.

Twelve minutes later Quinn arrives in the food court to find Matt and Mike sitting at a table, neither of them with any food in front of them, but both staring at a snow globe placed between them.

"Nice snow globe," Quinn says tentatively as she takes a seat across from them.

"Really? You think so? Because I think my mom will like it. She likes stuff that's pretty, it's pretty. But Mike says it's all wrong," Matt responds.

Mike explains, "It is pretty, but all this gift says is that you know your mom likes things that are generally pretty so he stopped and bought her the first pretty thing he found. I think that's thoughtless. I'd never get my mom anything like that."

"But I have a way different relationship with my mom than you do with yours so I think it's fine," Matt concludes and adds, "I'm hungry let's eat."

They head their separate ways in the food court. As Quinn waits for her food she comes to realize that despite having known Matt since seventh grade and having seen him outside of school not only in similar social circles but at her parent's country club where his were also members, she didn't really know that much about him. Beyond who he's dated on the Cheerios, what sports he plays, and that his dad is a surgeon and his mom is on the school board, she really doesn't know anything else about him. And she knows even less about Mike.

So, sitting back down with them, Quinn decides she should get to know both boys better, which will hopefully make them better friends (and continue to keep her mind far from the places she doesn't want it to be). She asks Mike, "So what's your relationship with your mom like? Matt mentioned it's different."

"He's like best friends with his mom," Matt jumps in teasingly.

"It's not like that," Mike denies, "I just spend a lot of time with her. My dad's a truck driver, does long hauls, so he's not around that much and I'm an only child so a lot of the time I'm all she has. Plus, she changed jobs last year and her new one kind of isolates her so she doesn't even have work friends anymore."

"What does she do?" Quinn asks.

"Takes pictures for the Lima newspaper. That's why you see my last name below every picture. But all of her assignments put her places alone, she only knows like two other people who work at the paper- her boss and the woman who gives her her pay checks- because she never has to be in the office," Mike explains.

"But you've always hung out with her. That didn't just start when her new job started making her extra lonely," Matt points out.

"Because I'm her only kid, I'm her only family when my dad's gone," Mike responds.

Matt comes back with, "For the last two years I've been the only kid my parents constantly have around."

"That's still not the same," Quinn interjects, catching on, "you do have an older brother and an older sister even if they are away at college most of the time. And your parents have each other and their activities to keep them busy. It sounds like Mike's mom only has him so naturally that would result in a closer bond."

"Exactly," Mike agrees. "Thank you," he adds to Quinn for understanding, somehow he had never been able to explain that right to Matt. Or he suspected that Matt did get it but just liked giving him a hard time about it, but either way it was nice to have someone on his side.

Matt smiles and rolls his eyes at Mike's triumph (he totally understood Mike's relationship with his mom, he just liked any opportunity to hassle his friend good naturedly- besides, Mike had been doing the same to him lately over his recent, ill-advised crush on Santana). He opts to change the topic, "So Puck's party was fun…even if none of the other people from the team and stuff showed up."

"Yeah," Quinn agrees quietly.

They can both tell that her heart definitely wasn't in her response, so Mike points out, "You know that that had nothing to do with…rumors or anything. Those guys would never pick some place that won't be serving alcohol over a party that will have it on a Saturday night…or any night."

"Especially since that means there won't be any drunk girls to hit on," Matt adds.

Despite the fact that Quinn knew that they were probably just trying to make her feel better because they were smart enough to know that Puck's fall in popularity (especially with his best friend) was partially her fault. But they did make a good point. The rest of the guys on Puck's football team really wouldn't go to a party where a parent was going to be present when they had the option of going somewhere unsupervised where they could drink and do other things to ensure they didn't remain sober. "Thank you," she responds with a small smile. She doesn't want to continue down a conversation path with them with Puck in it though, so she asks, "So what are you guys planning on getting your family members for Christmas, besides the snow globe for your mom?"

Quinn only has twenty more minutes left of her dinner break, but they spend the whole rest of the time discussing gifts as neither Matt nor Mike had given it much thought before simply showing up at the mall an hour ago. It makes for a nice night though. Quinn's glad they reached out to her and glad that she's now well on her way to making real friends out of everyone in glee club (her exceptions being Finn and Santana and Brittany to the degree that they didn't have real friends, but they had developed as decent of a relationship as they could probably possibly have for now). Because in the not too distant future…no, she's not supposed to be thinking that far ahead. She tries not to think of everything she has ahead of her, everything that may happen and everything that may not, but she knows that regardless of what the future ends up being, she's going to need these new friends she's making.

-o-o-o-

Puck is glad when Wednesday finally comes. Not only because it's the last day of finals and not only because it means he only has one more day until his "not-a-date" with Quinn, but because the glee club is meeting to do their last assignment today. They were supposed to do eighty's songs, two that were completely different, and they had to work boys versus girls. And working with the boys, given how he and Finn didn't talk anymore, was really uncomfortable and weird.

Actually, rehearsing their songs never went too badly. Artie mostly took the reigns tweaking what anyone needed to do musically because he was the most objective and reasonable and Mike and Matt always took charge of any choreography. It was mostly the part where they would sit around and try to come up with what songs they were going to do that was weird. Though he had opinions, he knew talking too much could result in him and Finn fighting which he didn't want and he knew no one else did either (they couldn't have Finn quitting again). And Finn was less vocal about his thoughts too…though Puck didn't know why since he was the one everyone would probably agree with because they really wanted to keep him in the club and knew he could use a win in anything right now. The lack of people being opinionated and stubborn, Puck thinks, is probably how they ended up choosing George Michael's "Faith" and Quiet Riot's "Cum on Feel the Noize" as their two eighty's songs with very opposing styles/messages. No one had loudly objected to the former when Kurt suggested it, nor when he added that they should dress up like George Michael. They were all trying too hard not to fight that they let themselves end up in 80's style super tight men's jeans with tears in them and leather jackets with the sleeves rolled up. Thus Puck hopes that they won't be getting any more girls versus guys assignments for a long time because while he may totally be rocking this look, he doesn't want to end up stuck doing anything like this again or sitting through mostly silent song selection meetings.

After the guys kick ass at "Faith" and "Cum on Feel the Noize," the girls do the same with Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" and The Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited." Puck doesn't bother making an effort not to watch Quinn throughout the performances. He had never made much of an effort before when she was with Finn, so he figured there definitely wasn't any point to trying not to at all now. Though, honestly, his attention does get slightly drawn away from Quinn to Rachel during "Hit Me With Your Best Shot." She was giving kind of a…saucy performance, for lack of a better word. And she was definitely laying it on thick. It made Puck wish he and Finn were still talking so he could know what was going through his head during that performance and what he was going to do about the sexy-tease-kinda-angry-but-hot-like thing Rachel had been putting on.

When the performances are over Mr. Schue declares that both the guys and the girls did an equally excellent job, no winners this time. And then he brings out some cookies, cupcakes, and punch and declares this a holiday party.

Everyone starts socializing and Puck tries not to go straight to Quinn- he doesn't want it to seem like he's suffocating her. So after a good fifteen minutes he saunters over to her as she's listening to Santana and Brittany tell her about Sue…well, he's not sure, but it sounds like some Cheerios were in trouble with her, something about not executing routines correctly. Anyway, he walks up to them and Santana abruptly stops talking and narrows her eyes at him.

"Have you talked to Mario yet?" Santana demands of him.

"No," Puck answers. It wasn't exactly easy to find out if some guy you barely know would be interested in having sex with a girl you've been known to hook up with.

"Then I have nothing to talk to you about. And get to it already, otherwise my Christmas isn't going to be very merry," Santana retorts, somehow making average words sound dirty, before she stomps off.

Brittany stays for a second longer before catching on to the fact that Santana wanted her to follow.

"What does she want you to talk to Mario about? And which Mario?" Quinn asks curiously.

"Rocha. And she wants me to find out if he'd have sex with her," Puck answers honestly. He notices Quinn's eyebrows shoot up, surprised, and adds, "Apparently that's what being just friends with Santana means- taking on really awkward tasks."

She smiles a little into her plastic cup. "Just friends" was a good thing to hear, though they still have a lot to talk about in that area. Now is not the time though so instead she simply wishes, "Good luck with that. Seems like she's going to be really mad if you don't do what she wants."

"I know," Puck assures. The girl is vicious and he's not ashamed to admit (in his head at least) that he is afraid of what she'd do to him if she's ever truly pissed at him. "I don't get why I'm supposed to do this though," he admits thoughtfully, "I thought she was with Brit."

Quinn glances at the two across the room, holding pinkies like they often did, "Yeah, but I don't think Santana is ever really _with_ anyone."

Puck knew that too, he just thought maybe it was changing. But discussing his former…whatever they were, wasn't why he came over. "So," he draws out, "what did you get Addie? Because I don't want to take you with me if you're just going to show up my gift," he teases.

She smiles as she answers, "Well, I know she's not going to accept me spending any money on her. If I did she'd probably return whatever I got her and mail the money back to me. So I figured I'd just bake her something and give her a nice thank you/Christmas card."

"That's what I was going to do. Well, sort of. I was going to have my mom bake something to give her," Puck tells her figuring that they'd just give Addie a bunch of food.

Quinn, however, isn't okay with them doing the same thing so she suggests, "Or you could sing her a song. She likes Neil Diamond like your mom and you already know a bunch of songs. I'm sure she'd love that a lot more than getting more food."

"But I don't do Neil for just anyone," he points out with a smirk, knowing exactly what he's referencing.

"Addie isn't just anyone," she returns, ignoring his implication so she can continue to speak.

That's a fair point, so instead of arguing with it Puck suggests, smirk still in place, "Or instead of each making something for her, we could bake something together."

She can't help smiling as she returns, "Considering the last time we were 'baking' together, I don't think that's a good idea. I don't need to end up covered in flour and coco powder again."

"I'm the one that got egg all over my head and I'm still willing to give 'baking' another chance," he tries.

"And I'm smart enough not to risk you getting me back for that," Quinn returns and she knows that they're technically talking about baking, but it doesn't really feel like it anymore. (If they were talking about what's being implied though, she knows her response may be different…even if that was something she shouldn't be considering right now and would only make everything more complicated.)

Puck knows what they're not exactly talking about and even though what they're technically talking about isn't going his way, he doesn't feel like he's losing. Something about the way she's smiling at him- reminds him of some very good times.

"Guys, can I get everyone's attention?" Mr. Schue calls, effectively interrupting them. Once it's quieted down Mr. Schue gives the floor to Artie.

"I wanted to invite everyone to a New Years Eve party. I know some or all of you may already have plans, but my parents are going to be away and I have a really nice set up in our basement; karaoke, a ton of instruments, a popcorn machine, and other stuff. So if you want to come over, uh, the party starts at eight," Artie tells them, faltering a bit. They didn't exactly hang out outside of glee club much, with a few notable exceptions and lately they definitely hadn't all hung out together so he knew he could be saying this and only getting Tina to come. Which was fine of course, more than fine.

Everyone goes back to talking and rather than returning their attention to each other, both Puck and Quinn's focus gets drawn to Kurt- who, at the mention of a party, remembers to ask Rachel about her "fella"- as he put it. All of this transpiring with Finn standing right next to Rachel and he suddenly seems very interested in the contents of his cup as Rachel responds politely answering Kurt's questions about Eli.

"Awkward," Puck comments on the scene.

"Yep," Quinn agrees. She turns back to Puck and offers, "Artie's basement is actually really impressive."

"Yeah? I think I'll go," Puck decides. Then, because he doesn't want it to seem like her slight interest in going is his whole reason for saying that (though it is), he adds, "It seems like a glee club thing so, probably should."

"Yeah, I'm going too. It does seem like a whole club thing and it's not like I have to work or have anywhere else to be besides," Quinn responds, attributing her decision to other things than the fact that he was going to be at the party.

Within five more minutes people start leaving so Quinn and Puck take that as a sign of the end of the day and head their separate ways. Neither mention how they didn't exactly reach a resolution for what each or both of them were going to get Addie. Instead, Puck simply tells her that he'd pick her up at seven tomorrow night and she agrees saying that she'd probably talk to him before then thought (he had a habit of calling with what were clearly just excuses to check in on her).

-o-o-o-

While Quinn's Wednesday night was spent working, Puck's was spent having a conversation with his mom about an unexpected topic.

One second she was rambling on about how easy her new grill from Quinn was to use (clearly hinting that he should be using it to pitch in every now and then by cooking for everyone) and the next she said, "Oh, and guess what? We'll be moving. Hopefully sometime soon."

"What?" Puck asks, because he's pretty sure he couldn't have possibly heard his mom right.

"I talked to Steve again today. You know, Rachel's dad? And he finished going through our finances and concluded that we've been spending kind of…stupidly. This apartment costs more per month than a mortgage would- especially with how low financing rates are right now and given that there are special deals for first time buyers, which I would be since the house was in your father's name. I never intended for us to stay here as long as we have, it was just the first place I saw available when your father had sold our house without notice and was kicking us out," May says, trying not to sound bitter over it (it was so long ago now). She forces a smile and tries again, "So since he says it'll be a good idea financially, and since it's very possible we could need more room than we have here in the not too distant future, I decided we're taking his advice and I'm going to start looking at houses."

"Are you sure this guy's actually good with money?" Puck insists, "Because we were broke earlier this year so I don't see how we could possibly afford a house."

May sighs and begins, "Honey, I was never actually planning on telling you this, but you don't know everything about our finances. In fact, there's a lot you don't know."

"What do you mean?" Puck asks, eyes narrowing.

"The bank account you thought was empty, that's only one of my bank accounts. I never told you about the other one because during those times I…had my bad days and you had to take care of things, I didn't want you to have access to a lot of money, just enough to get by. And I'm sorry I didn't keep enough money in there and went on my depression streaks without checking to make sure you had something to survive on first. But I couldn't tell you about the other account just like I didn't tell you about some of my hiding places in the apartment because I couldn't trust you with that much money. I was afraid that once I was sober again I'd find the living room filled with a brand new, top-of-the-line entertainment system and a new car parked out on the street," May explains.

Stunned, Puck asks, "We have enough money for me to get a brand new car and a new entertainment system?"

"Not exactly," May takes back. She tries to explain without giving him a specific idea (especially since that amount would soon be changing), "My job pays pretty decently. Technically my yearly earnings would make us middle class. But after taxes, and rent, and Kelyn's daycare, and your sports stuff, and Kelyn's extra curricular stuff, and cable, internet, electricity, water, and garbage bills, things just stack up. This is only a one-income family so paying for everything comes out of my paychecks, which kind of forces us down the social class ladder. But over the years, being stingy with what I buy us and not allowing you to know there was any extra money, allowed me to save up a bit. I thought we could buy a house and not have to get a loan at all or maybe I could pay for college for you and Kelyn. Although while real estate has apparently dropped, college tuition has gone up so I don't know that that one's going to be possible. But, given the situation our family is in now with possibly having one or two extra members added to it, I think a home that would be able to accommodate all of us is a better investment."

Over the years, on many occasions Puck had sold things of his so that he could buy something for Kelyn that she wanted, thinking that there was no other way they could afford it. But he didn't think about that now, about how it was apparently never necessary. Instead he said, "I get it. We've got money, but don't get too excited about it." He sighs a little and continues, "But Ma', I told you before about-"

"I know," she interjects, "you don't think I should consider that Quinn could be in your future or ours necessarily, but you can't plan on her not being in it either. If she decides when she's eight months pregnant that she wants to keep the baby and wants your help in raising her, what are we going to do? Try to scramble and figure out a place for her in our lives then? No. You may want to be realistic about the chances of something like that happening and I get it, you don't want to get your hopes up about a future you might not get. But someone in this whole situation has got to start planning for the all the 'what if's' in your situation and I'm your mother so it's going to be me. Deal with it." May stares sternly at her son for another second, waiting to see if he tries to argue with her again. When he doesn't retort she continues, "Good. Now I'm going to go look at houses with Steve after work on Friday. You're watching Kelyn and I expect you to have dinner ready when I get home. I've been telling you how this grill works for twenty minutes, you should have no problem with it."

Oh, so that's why she had been talking about, the grill. Whoops.

But he'll have to deal with reading the manual so he can learn how to use it later because right now all he can think about is everything else his mom said. He worries that his mom will buy a house with a room she thinks is either going to be for the baby when it's with him or for Quinn and the baby and he's going to end up passing by it day after day empty. He knows his mom is just doing what she thinks is right and necessary, but sometimes, given the gravity of their situation, he has trouble seeing anything but all the ways everything won't work out.

-o-o-o-

Quinn's first day of her winter break starts with Jessica. They have breakfast together and video chat.

"So you don't have to work today, what are you going to do with the rest of your first day off?" Jessica asks after she finishes telling Quinn about what she's decided she's going to do about her hair (she's thinking she wants something with more dimension…and hopes her friend knows how to pull something like that off).

Quinn knew that she was going to tell Jessica about her plans for tonight eventually (because lying made it seem like she was trying to hide something and there's nothing to hide, right?), so she offers casually, "I was going to see what else I might be able to find around my room that I could sell and then I'm going with Puck to see Addie tonight."

Jessica's brows furrow, "You're going on a date with the father of your baby and an older lady?"

"No," Quinn denies a little too quickly. She explains, still trying to sound nonchalant, "Given that Addie lost her husband this year and everything she's done for us, we both wanted to get her something for Christmas so we figured we might as well just take her our gifts together."

"Uh-huh," Jessica says doubtfully. But she's glad Quinn's mentioning anything about Puck to her again at all (it had been two days since she said anything about him) so she doesn't press it. Instead she says, "Well have fun with that. And give Addie my number. I want to meet her and I don't want to wait until I come see you. And don't use that excuse about your sister calling someone being embarrassing- she isn't one of your high school friends. She's a mom and a grandma, she'd understand."

"Fine. I'll try to remember to give her your number," Quinn says, unsure if she actually means it or if she's just saying it to get Jessica to stop asking her things like this. Trying to get away from the topic of her life and the rest of her day, Quinn asks, "So what are you and Eric doing for Christmas?"

"Well, considering how hard it is to get me into a car in this cast, not a whole lot. I decided I'm telling Mom tomorrow about my leg and start praying for me that they won't try to come and visit- not sure I could take that. Though I think I'm safe on that front, they do intensely dislike Eric's family. But as for Christmas day, we're going to Eric's parents to have dinner with his family and the rest of the day...well, you know my neighbor Helen? She's coming over on Christmas Eve to hang mistletoe over the bed for me so hopefully we'll be in bed until it's time for dinner," Jessica explains, the last bit very happily.

"And lets make that the last I hear about the mistletoe and…bed," Quinn says uncomfortably. She moves on quickly offering, "And I think you're right about mom and dad. If you already have plans with Eric's family then they probably won't visit. They're always bad mouthing them around here even though we've only met them a half a dozen times and they were always nice."

"Yeah, but that's just how our parents roll," Jessica says, laughing at her phrasing to herself (maybe she should start taking less pain pills). "So," Jessica draws, knowing that maybe they should leave this topic un-discussed a little while longer, but wanting to know all the same, "do you have any plans for Christmas yet?"

"No," Quinn says honestly, a little quietly. She knows her sister feels bad about not being able to spend it with her given everything that's been going on and she doesn't want her to feel worse so she tries to smile as she adds, "But I'm sure I will. Even if I just end up sleeping most of the day- which will probably sound really good because from Saturday until Christmas I'll be working every day and I've been really tired lately."

"Is that normal?" Jessica asks concerned, which starts a long conversation about how Quinn's been feeling pregnancy wise/her health where Jessica googles everything Quinn tells her to make sure that she's right about things being normal. This lasts all the way until Jessica's friend shows up to do her hair, at which point Quinn remembers that she's got to start baking something for tonight.

-o-o-o-

At seven Quinn waits out on the curb in front of her house and she's not surprised when Puck is exactly on time (seems like one of the changes he's been trying to make lately and one that he's been successful with). Since they hadn't talked yet today (Puck having been at work with Hank), Quinn catches him up about who else has said they're going to Artie's party (Kurt, Mercedes, Tina, and Rachel so far) and he asks her about what's been going on with her sister since she mentioned she talked to her too. It makes for a decidedly un-awkward ride to Foster's.

Quinn notices that when they arrive Puck doesn't take anything out of his truck with him (and wasn't he going to bring Addie food or a gift? Wasn't that the whole reason for them doing this?), but Addie comes out to greet them so she doesn't get the chance to ask as they're ushered inside and quickly sit down to dinner because Addie already had everything ready.

(Addie already had everything set up in the booth the kids used to sit in; a place set for Puck and one for Quinn on the same side of the booth. This wasn't her first time at the rodeo.)

They spend dinner catching up on each other's lives. They talk about Quinn's job, Puck's job, Hanukah/Puck's family, Addie's holiday plans (her family is gathering at her middle son's house in Michigan), Quinn and Puck's new-ish activity of glee club (Addie's going to regional's...or at least she wants to surprise them by going once she learns where and when it is specifically).

After dinner both Quinn and Puck get quite a surprise when Addie stands up and declares, "Puck, you take care of the dishes. Quinn, you're coming with me to have a chat about birth control. And when we get back you can dish up that pie you brought while I talk to Puck about the same thing." Seeing their slightly mortified, highly uncomfortable expressions Addie adds, "What you're going to do in the future specifically may be something you're taking a break from thinking about, which I think was a very good idea and I'm glad you took my advice, but either way this is going to be an issue later so let's just dive into it." She grabs Quinn's hand and tugs her out of the booth and toward the door, leaving Puck nothing to do but what he was told to (though it takes him a few minutes to get to it- he can't believe that this is how this night is going).

Addie pulls Quinn all the way to her house, making note of things to watch out for so she didn't trip on the path from the bar to the house, leaving Quinn stunned in silence. When they get to Addie's house she pulls an extra chair up to the computer in her living room and motions for Quinn to sit down as she pulls up a website and explains, "I found this real handy website that'll lay out all of your options for you- from type to specific brands. I wish I had something like that when I was your age. I only had the option of talking to a doctor and even then it didn't result in much more than getting a pamphlet."

"Uh," Quinn interjects awkwardly, "I was just going to go back to being abstinent. After everything sex led to the one time I had it, I won't be doing it again for a very long time." She honestly hadn't given it that much thought, but either way things would turn out, she figures having to take care of a baby would eliminate time for sex/a relationship and giving up a baby would make her unable to do more than make out without remembering what she lost for years and years to come so she wouldn't be able to go through with anything more. Either way, she figures it's much more effective than her previous non-reasons for waiting.

"But after everything the last time led to, don't you think it'd be better to be cautious?" Addie points out.

Quinn considers Addie's question and realizes that while she's been trying to be smart about all of her decisions lately, if she wants to be about this one too, she needs to listen to Addie and be careful of a future no matter how unlikely she thinks it'll be. So she agrees, "Yes. You're right. It would be better to be cautious."

"Okay then, you have the pill, a patch, a shot, one of those rings, an IUD-" Addie rambles off the list of options before proceeding to rule out several of them based on her own experience or by their cost/ease-of-use.

After twenty minutes of listening to Addie ramble about the different options Quinn manages to convince Addie that she's made an informed decision and she'll talk to her doctor about what specific pill would be best when the time is right. They return to the bar and Addie sends Quinn into the kitchen to slice up and serve the pie she brought (and asks her to take her time with it- at least give her five minutes with Puck) while Addie talks to Puck.

Addie slides into the booth across from Puck (after he had finished the dishes he had occupied himself by trying to beat his last high score on snake on his phone) slides a twenty-dollar bill to him and says simply, "Buy some condoms."

"Uh," is all Puck manages. He figured that by talking to him about contraception it was going to be like when Foster told him to live his life by the motto "no glove, no love."

"Foster said the same thing to all of our boys and to you," Addie begins explaining because she can tell Puck didn't see this coming, "and as much as I'd like to think our boys would remember his rhyming motto, it didn't make them prepared. So, just like I did with them, here's some money to make it possible to live by the motto without having to dip into any of your own savings."

Puck clears his throat, uncomfortable, and grabs the money (he's broke, he's not turning anything down even if he probably shouldn't be taking her money) as he says not meeting Addie's eyes, "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Addie returns. "You're in a different position than my sons ever were though," she offers, "which means every time you might want to risk not using contraception in the future, you can think of this experience you're going through now and realize that it's not worth the risk."

"It's not like it's all been bad," he mutters without thinking. Realizing that that was out loud, and that Addie seems surprised (he's kind of surprised he said/thought that himself). He tries to explain, "I mean…I used to put kids in dumpsters just…because and now I don't. And I used to think that I could never let myself be in a situation like this because then I'd end up just like my dad, but now I know I'm nothing like him and if this hadn't of happened maybe I wouldn't know that ever or maybe I wouldn't know it until ten or fifteen years from now when thinking I was close to being just like my dad and pissed off about it for so long might have screwed me up too much to ever be the kind of man I'm trying to be."

Addie smiles a little. She likes Puck, he reminds her of Foster sometimes- having moments where he's very noble. "You're right," she agrees, "this experience does seem to be making you into a better man. You've stepped up and you're learning how to do the right thing. Which means that in the future you will be responsible enough to always remember to be safe and make the effort not to have another child unless it's planned."

"Yes ma'm," he says with a slight but respectful roll of his eyes.

"Good," she comments before yelling for Quinn that it was safe for her to come out now, they were done with their talk.

After the pie Puck mentions he forgot his gift in his truck and runs out to get it while Addie protests that they didn't need to bring her anything. When he comes back in he has his guitar and he plays and sings "Sweet Caroline," much to Addie's delight (and Quinn's- it's partially for her again, she's sure of that by the way he smiles at her).

Half an hour later, after Addie double checks the Christmas presents she bought for her grandkids with Puck and Quinn as "experts on what the young people like," Puck and Quinn say goodnight and head home.

After they pull out of the lot and they're on the road home, Puck makes the obvious comment, "So, that was awkward."

"Yep," Quinn agrees. "She meant well though," she amends because she knew it was true despite how uncomfortable that portion of the night had been. "Still, maybe next time we want to go see her, we should ask her if she plans on doing anything like this again. Maybe it would have been better if we had a heads up," Quinn considers (not realizing her comment about there being a "next time"- it was Addie, of course they'd both see her again).

Puck noticed the bit about "next time" but he tries not to let it go to his head. Instead he simply agrees, "Yeah. Definitely." He lets silence settle for several seconds (maybe a whole minute) and then asks with false casualness, "So what are you doing tomorrow? You're off again right?"

"Yeah," she confirms before telling him (somehow they hadn't gotten to it earlier), "I'm going shopping with Mercedes and Tina. I ran into them when I was shopping for Hanukah gifts and they ended up coming along with me and helping me out, so now we're going to go Christmas shopping."

"Cool," he comments and quickly moves on to why he had asked in the first place, "After work tomorrow I get to watch Kelyn for a while. And make dinner. My mom is meeting with Rachel's dad- he's giving her financial advice. So she's making me pick Kel up from dance and use that grill thing you got her to make dinner. You know, if you're done shopping by then you could join us."

Quinn knows Puck well enough that she knows what he means (everything he means- because his words do have a hidden meaning and one that he hasn't really been hiding lately). "Are you trying to get me to come over so I'll cook and you won't have to?" she asks though she already knows she's right.

"Sort of," he admits. It wasn't his only reason for asking (and he's pretty sure she knows that), but if he could get away with not having to try and cook he wasn't going to pass that opportunity up.

"You'll be fine cooking. You've done it before, you'll manage," she assures with a smile. But she did promise Kelyn that she'd be visiting again and she promised May the same. She adds, "I don't know when shopping with Tina and Mercedes will end, but if it's early enough maybe I'll come by- but I won't help you cook, it sounds like your mom wants _you_ to do that."

He scoffs like he's disappointed, but he's smiling as he pulls up to the curb next to her house.

"Goodnight," she bids with a smile as she gets out of his truck.

" 'Night," he returns as she shuts the door. He adds through the open window, "Call me when you're done with Tina and Mercedes tomorrow," before pulling away from the curb.

Well, if she was going to come over she though he'd know it was a given that she'd call, but she supposed he told her that so she'd call either way. It seemed a little odd though. He'd never asked her to call him. She heads into her house wondering why he said that this time when he usually just called her when he wanted to talk to her (he did it frequently). Maybe he had other reasons for asking her to dinner than just wanting to see her and wanting her to cook. Why else would he make sure she calls him other than for some specific reason?

Or maybe she was just over thinking all of this. Puck tended not to think much before speaking so maybe she really shouldn't be analyzing things he says to her. (But the thing is, she knows that sometimes there is more meaning behind his words than he comes right out and says. The meaning behind some of his words and actions is something that she can't…deal with right now, but she does know it's there.)

She goes to bed and tries not to think about anything anymore and hopes tomorrow will keep her distracted from all thoughts. She's not supposed to be thinking about the future right now and even when she can start again, anything with Puck isn't supposed to matter (not romantically at least) because everything else was more important and would need to be dealt with first.

-o-o-o-

"Don't you love it?" Jessica asks, whipping her head around in front of her laptop for the web cam.

"Yes it's…so…rich," Quinn tries to compliment, but it's hard to actually see how Jessica's hair has changed given that she's still swinging it around. "You can stop that now," she tells her sister in hopes that she'll stop with her hair flipping (it's starting to make her dizzy).

"Right," Jess says after she stops. She fixes her hair with her hands as she continues smiling, "I love it so much though. I haven't gotten anything done in months- we were trying to cut back on expenses so I hadn't even made it to the salon for a long time before I broke my leg. Thank God Sherri finally mentioned that she knows how to do hair. And thank God she was right."

"How many colors do you have in there?" Quinn asks, squinting at her screen.

"I lost track. I wanted dimension so added a couple of shades of low lights and highlights so I have everything ranging from light brown to your color," Jessica explains. She smirks suggestively and adds, "Eric _really _liked it."

"Okay, enough of that," Quinn declares.

"So how was your night? Does Addie have my number?" Jessica asks, changing the topic to the one she was really interested in (she only talked about her hair as long as she did because she didn't want to seem like she was pouncing).

"No. I forgot to give it to her," Quinn says honestly. To Jessica's disbelieving look she explains, "I did plan on giving it to her, but she distracted me from everything else when she decided to have a long talk about birth control."

"What?" Jessica asks, thinking she had to have misheard.

"She wanted to talk about what kind of birth control I would use after I have the baby. She said that no matter how I think things will be, I should be more careful. Which I agreed with but it was still very awkward to sit there and listen to her go through all of the different options until I chose something and convinced her that I was well informed enough to make a decision," Quinn recalls.

"Well I guess better early than never," Jessica offers. She hadn't thought about talking to Quinn about that and though she likes to think it would have occurred to her eventually, she's glad someone in her life cared enough to think of it.

"Yeah. And she was right that it felt good to make a decision about something for the future even if I don't think it will end up being a very useful decision," Quinn adds.

Jessica rolls her eyes at Quinn's pessimism and tells her, "No matter how this turns out, I guarantee you'll have sex again and that decision will be useful." Realizing, Jessica raises an eyebrow and inquires, "Was Puck in on the decision?"

"No. Addie made him do the dishes while she talked to me and then she talked to him for a fraction of the time about the same thing," Quinn explains, glad that that was the honest answer because the night was awkward enough and it would have only been more so if Addie had talked to each of them in front of each other.

Jessica sighs a little and as she decides she's disappointed in Addie for not assuming that she should talk to the two of them together because they'd be having sex in the future. She couldn't be sure herself given the closest she had gotten to seeing the two of them together was watching her sister talk to him on the phone, but she was sure there was still something going on between them even if they weren't acting on it. And she had a feeling it was intense and hot if the way Quinn would smile and blush was any indication. (Plus it really didn't hurt the possible equation that Puck was very attractive. In fact when Eric first showed her the video he took a that competition, Jess remembers commenting, "Does it make me a predator if I keep thinking about how much hotter high school guys seem now then when I was in school?" Not that her husband was a slouch in any way, which she promptly reminded him after that comment- he was muscular, chiseled, had that whole hot-lumberjack thing going on at the moment because he stopped shaving, and she always thought he looked a lot like that blonde guy that was the brother of the blonde girl from _Everwood.)_ Jessica realizes she hadn't responded to Quinn, instead getting side tracked from thinking about her sister and the guy she was clearly still attracted to, to thinking about her husband. "Sorry," she apologizes for her lapse, "just thinking about how Eric's doing," she lies. She explains because she had yet to inform Quinn, "He's showing one of the stores today. If we could get that sold that'd make three that wouldn't be burdening us anymore."

"That's great. I hope it gets sold," Quinn wishes sincerely. Brows furrowing, she can't help but inquire, "But how many are you planning on selling anyway? Don't you need to keep some? Isn't it your only income and doesn't selling them eliminate your income?"

"Collectively they're costing us more than they're making us right now. And right now we have six of the eight up for sale but we might sell all of them," Jessica explains and confesses, "This isn't what we thought it'd be and it seems like right now we may need to get out of it so maybe we should just do it. Sell all the stores and start something new."

"Like what?" Quinn asks.

"We don't know yet, that's why they're not all up for sale. We're still thinking about what we should do," Jessica answers. She didn't need her little sister who had more than enough to worry about already, concerning herself with the things she's going through though (that's why she had never mention her and Eric's uncertain future career wise/financially). To get away from it now, she tries to distract Quinn by asking, "So what you'd and Puck get Addie?"

"I baked her a pie," Quinn offers and hesitates before trying to say breezily, "and Puck sang her a Neil Diamond song because she's a big fan I told him it'd be a good idea."

"The same song he sang to you and put on that CD?" Jessica pounces.

Quinn sighs, almost regretting that she had mentioned all that to Jessica (though ultimately glad that she had someone to talk to about _everything_) because she knew how much Jess would read into it. "Yes," she answers honestly.

Jessica smiles and tries to keep her mouth shut (she knows Quinn wants to leave all thoughts of her romantic life out of her head for a while because she has more important things to deal with).

Quinn knows that smile. There's something Jessica really wants so to say, but isn't. She knows she'll probably regret it, but she asks, "What? What's that smile about this time?"

Well, since she asked, Jessica bursts, "It seems like he's getting really good at finding ways to let you know he wants you without coming right out and saying it." Since Quinn doesn't jump in denying it, Jessica continues, "Which is good, right? Since you don't want him to say anything because you don't want to deal with that part of your life right now."

Quinn doesn't know what to say. She tries so hard not to think about any of this stuff because right now, on top of everything else, she can't deal with trying to figure out if she could or wants try again with Puck after how many times her heart has already been broken because of him/them. She offers, "Yeah, I guess," in agreement with her sister that it is nice that he hasn't done anything that really defies her wishes for what she needs right now, because, thinking of it purely objectively (or as objectively as she can), it is nice.

That was kind of lackluster. Jessica is disappointed by how unproductive bringing this up seems to be. She expected some kind of telling response so maybe she could get some more insight into the things Quinn doesn't say (which she knows that despite the fact that they're closer than ever- she's not saying everything about everything). Jessica tries again asking, "It seems like he finds a way to do that, showing you he wants you, every day lately. When was the last time he didn't do that? When was the last time you weren't sure that he's into you?"

"It's been a while," Quinn admits (silently cursing herself for getting them started on this path), "but even if it has been, there was still a long time where I knew he didn't want me because he said that to me right after weeks where I thought he did want me." Quinn glances down, away from her sister's gaze through her laptop screen, and tries not to be _in_ this conversation. She hates thinking about this. She hates remembering that Puck had changed his mind so quickly last time that it completely blindsided her (and that that wasn't the first time that everything fell apart between them). She doesn't want to remember any of that about him. That's why she tries to concentrate all thoughts on the baby and what she's going to do about it. In regards to the baby, he's consistently wanted to be involved and if she ignores all romantic aspect of her life and their history, she can believe that and she wants to believe that for whenever she makes her decisions.

"Well maybe because of how good he's been, you could just forget about the time when he wasn't. Maybe he just messed up then and he's trying to make up for it now so you could move on," Jessica suggests. She's just trying to look at the bright side of things.

"I can't forget," Quinn's quick to retort, anger clear in her tone, "If I could I would but…you've never even been dumped you can't understand what it was like to…stand there thinking we'd be together and hear him admit to planning on being with any other girl if I didn't put out."

"First, I have too been dumped. Don't you remember Lane Ernst from my freshman year of college?" Jessica responds.

"No," Quinn answers honestly. She's never heard her sister mention a guy names Lane.

"Oh, right, I didn't tell you about him because I was hiding him from mom and dad. They would have hated him. He was in a band and had a neck tattoo. Anyway, he broke up with me during one of his band's gigs though- between their third and fourth song when he pulled a girl up on the stage, made out with her, and then said, "Jess, it's over." Jackass. So I have been broken up with," Jessica recounts. It wasn't really the most relevant point, but it was completely inaccurate that she had never been hurt by a guy (Lane may have been the only one to dump her, but he wasn't the only one that hurt her). She sighs heavily and gets to her real point, "But, more importantly, I was just trying to say that people screw up. We all do it. And sometimes in the process we hurt the people we care about. You can't go through life holding everyone's mistakes against them. You're about to go through some pretty serious and difficult situations with Puck, so maybe you should try to let what he's done to try to fix his mistakes speak louder than the fact that he made some. And maybe you should talk to him about what he did because, given everything you have ahead of you, I think you both need to be completely honest with each other so you can make informed decisions. Otherwise, I'm afraid you're going to end up with a lot of regrets."

Quinn considers her sister's advice. Jessica has a point. She's been trying to just ignore their romantic history and concentrate on everything else Puck has been so she can consider that and nothing more about him when she starts trying to make decisions about the future again. But just like last night when she was over analyzing his words, she can't get past all of the uncertainties surrounding them. Romance shouldn't be part of her life right now, she's still certain of that, but maybe Jessica has a point about their need to clear up the past. "I think you may be right," Quinn admits, "and I'll consider talking to him…after this month is over because right now I'm supposed to be giving my self a break from worrying about the future." To Jessica's continued worried look, she adds, "I promise, I will talk to him."

"Good," Jessica declares with a satisfied smile, "and when you do, you promise to consult me about what you're going to wear first? It's a serious conversation, what you wear matters."

"Yes, I will let you help me pick out something to wear," Quinn swears with a smile, grateful for her sister.

"Yay! Now, before you have to meet your friends, I need your opinion on what I should get Eric for Christmas," Jessica begins before she dives into reading Quinn a long list of stuff she managed to come up with while she's been basically bedridden.

-o-o-o-

Six hours later Quinn thought that shopping with Tina and Mercedes was finally ending and she was relieved. Not that she hadn't been having a great time with them, but after six hours mostly spent on her feet they were hurting just as bad as they did after work. Which had been pretty bad lately- it's a pregnancy related side effect.

But now she's fairly sure that shopping is coming to a close as both Tina and Mercedes have been mentioning that they're hungry so it seems like they're going to figure out some place to go and get dinner. Or at least she thought it seemed that way until Mercedes got a phone call from her mom and after she hung up she regretfully informed them, "My parents said I have to come home. My grandma stopped by for a surprise visit and we haven't seen her in a while so they want me there."

"Well, at least you got to finish your shopping before they called," Tina points out.

Mercedes purses her lips in thought before deciding, "Nah, I think I'm going to need to go shopping a couple more times before Christmas. And maybe a few times after Christmas too."

They laugh and Tina agrees that she's going to need to too, but Quinn knows she'll most likely be working so she doesn't comment. They say their goodbyes to Mercedes and she heads home.

Tina and Quinn have never hung out alone together, which they both know and realize as they are suddenly alone standing near the center of the mall.

Tina breaks the awkward silence and asks brightly, "So, do you want to go get some dinner?"

"Sure," Quinn agrees happily (though, in the back of her mind, she realizes that that means she won't be able to stop by Puck's…and Kelyn and May's for dinner- inserting the last two names for good measure).

They head for the exit closest to Quinn's car discussing where they should go when Tina's phone goes off and, after reading the text she got, she stops walking.

"Something wrong?" Quinn asks concerned.

"Not exactly," Tina answers. "I just got a text from my dad checking that I wasn't coming home for dinner. He's okay with that it's just," Tina pauses looking guilty as she explains, "my brother isn't going to be around tonight either and I'm going back to my mom's tomorrow and I didn't really see my dad last night because I was with Artie-"

"It's okay, I understand," Quinn interrupts and assures, "I can drop you off at home so you can spend time with your dad."

"Oh no that's not what I was going to suggest," Tina corrects, "I was going to ask if it'd be okay with you if my dad joins us? He'd probably pay and you'll definitely like him, everyone does, he's cool."

"Oh…okay," Quinn responds slowly and hopes her smile is convincing. She's sure Tina is probably right and that she'll like Mr. Cohen-Chang. But she's met a lot of parents lately and they've all been so nice to her and, rationally, everyone can't be, right? Eventually someone else is going to judge her just like her parents and with every new parent she meets, she can't help but fear that this time her luck will run out and they'll hate her just as much as her parents. But Tina is probably right about her dad being great, she tries to convince her self as she smiles and says, "Sure, call him and ask him to join us."

Tina does just that and her dad tells her that he's right by Texas Roadhouse if that's okay with both girls- his treat for her friend. Tina checks with Quinn, who isn't familiar with the restaurant, but says it's fine with her all the same. They head for Quinn's car so they can get to the restaurant where Mr. Cohen-Chang will be waiting.

On the way to the restaurant Quinn tries to fill the silence by asking conversationally, "Do both of your parents live in town?"

"Yeah, opposite sides of town and my dad works in Findlay so he's not here too often, but they're both here so shuffling back and forth between them isn't bad," Tina answers. She had been trying to let people in more lately. Artie and glee club had taught her that she was missing out by keeping everyone away. Things had gone very well with forming a close friendship with Mercedes and she knows Quinn isn't the queen of mean she used to be and that she wants real friends too. So she musters up her courage and offers her story, "My parents got divorced when I was ten. A while before that my mom started dating. Her and my dad hadn't been separated at the time and as far as my dad knew everything was fine between them. Then one night instead of cooking dinner like she usually did, she said she was going out and she didn't come home until morning- she had been on a date. She was unhappy so she just stopped being in the marriage. My older sister still won't talk to her for that- she thinks she broke up our family. My older brother didn't deal with it well either- he was in your sister's class actually but I don't think they knew each other- he joined the army to leave the situation right away. I did okay with it. I mean, I guess my older sister and brother cared more because they had known our parents together longer, but I had never really seen them as…belonging together so I thought I handled it well. Only later did I realize that my stuttering and decision to keep people out kind of coincided with the divorce exactly. My younger brother is fine with it all though. He was so young, he barely knew them together."

"Wow," Quinn comments, "I had no idea you had so many siblings. And I noticed that your stutter was gone but I don't know if you're sensitive about it so I didn't want to ask how you got it to go away."

"It's fine. I invented it to keep people away. I think maybe I really didn't want anyone asking me questions about the divorce and how I was doing with it and I didn't want people trying to talk to me about stuff in general. But glee and Artie made me realize that I don't want that anymore. I want to let people in now," Tina explains, ending with a hopeful smile.

"Bitchiness works to keep people away too," Quinn comments with an understanding smile.

"But you're not doing that anymore either. We're both trying to change," Tina says, stating the obvious because it felt like an opportunity to relate to each other.

"Yes," Quinn agrees and adds optimistically, "and I think we're both doing well with it."

Tina agrees with her, but she's distracted from that thought by the fact that they're at the restaurant and pulling into the parking lot and she had an additional point with explaining her family situation other than just sharing. Hastily, she adds, "Agreed. But I was sharing about my family stuff not only just to share, but because it's…a sensitive topic with my dad. Well, that's not really the right word. He talks about it and he'll seem like he's fine, but it's just…I don't know how to explain it. You'll see it though…he's good with everything that happened, but at the same time, he's not. I thought if you didn't know the gist of the story though, his behavior would be confusing. Or at least that was how Artie found it at first because they met before I got to tell Artie. Anyway, I'm sure it'll be fun though. My dad works really hard to have a great relationship with me and my brothers and sister, so he's always great with all of our friends too."

That was confusing, Quinn wasn't sure what she'd be walking into now. She knew she could probably trust Tina's judgment, but her concern and ultimate lack of explanation about her dad worried Quinn all the way into the restaurant.

Quinn was put at ease when she saw the man who was clearly Mr. Cohen-Chang. He was a slightly portly older man with a very nice head of hair (clearly on it's way to going salt-and-pepper) and Quinn knew he was Tina's dad because the second they got into the main dinning room he smiled, waved, and called happily, "Ti!"

Tina practically jogged over to him and gave him a hug before sitting down. Quinn had to increase her pace so she wouldn't be too far behind and she arrived at the table just as Tina was sitting down.

Before Tina could introduce her, her dad jumped in smiling brightly at his daughter's friend, "Oh, let me guess…" he pauses and Quinn waits. She figures that if Tina mentioned having a pregnant friend, he shouldn't need long. But he doesn't look at her stomach, instead, for the whole three seconds he spends thinking, his eyes are only on her face. "Quinn?" he tries clearly uncertain (his daughter mentioned two pretty blondes being part of her glee club).

"Yes," Quinn confirms and offers as she sits down, "it's nice to meet you Mr. Cohen-Chang."

"Bruce," he insists, "and it's nice to meet you too. I've heard a lot about you. Let's see…you're a junior, you're pregnant, your parents are being jackasses about it- my words not Tina's, she's too nice to put it that way. Oh, and my favorite thing Ti's said about you, you really stuck it to that crazy cheerleading coach last Monday when you guys snuck off campus."

Quinn's uncertain. Bruce definitely seems like a nice guy. He said that she's pregnant like he was listing a basic fact (no hint of judgment), he agreed with the other parents she's met lately that hers are the ones who are in the wrong in her situation, and he complimented her. It was unusual though- she's not sure how to respond. But it seems like a compliment so she goes with the typical response and says, "Thank you?"

Bruce laughs a little and returns, "You're welcome." He offers, expanding a bit more on his previous comment, "When Tina told me what happened, I was really impressed by what you did for your friends- standing up to that woman like you did. I'm not sure I would have been able to do the same. I've seen that woman on the news, she's kind of scary- scary in the sense that she seems like the type that wouldn't flinch at the idea of committing murder…or mass murder. And yet, you stepped up, protected everyone, and got the upper hand."

"It was nothing," Quinn says modestly because she should be modest, right? Even if she was pretty proud of herself for doing it too.

"Oh and you're modest too!" Bruce says, lighting up, "Wow, you know, despite the people your parents sound like they are, you turned out great. They're missing out on a really good kid."

"Thank you," Quinn says, because she really is grateful. But she can't help but add, "You just met me though."

"But I still know plenty about you to know you're a good kid," Bruce insists.

Before Quinn can say anything, Tina interjects, "He really does. Every time me or my brothers or sister tell him anything about any of our friends, or in my case glee club, he writes notes down on these massive diagrams of our social lives he has hanging on his refrigerator."

"Well you kids can have such complicated social circles and I don't like to be left out just because it's hard to keep track of everything so I developed a system," Bruce defends.

Quinn's surprised. She's never heard of a parent doing anything like that before. She offers, "That's so nice that you make the effort to stay involved."

Bruce shrugs modestly and offers jokingly, "Well keeping track of their social lives distracts me from my limited one."

"Bruce!" They suddenly hear called by a deep voice. A man who looks to be in his mid-twenties and is wearing a polo shirt with the restaurant's name on it approaches the table with a smile.

"Devin," Bruce greets with a smile, "I didn't know you were still working here."

Devin shrugs and offers as he comes to a stop at the corner of the table in between Bruce and Tina, "It's a better gig than nothing at all." He turns to Tina and greets, "Hey Tina. Wow, you're looking a lot older than I remember. You're what…?"

"Fifteen. Sixteen in April," Tina supplies for him.

"That's so insane. I remember when we were ten and you were born and Ben didn't like you stealing his thunder as the youngest," Devin recalls

"You weren't friends with Ben until you two were in high school. Plus Ben was eleven when Tina was born," Bruce points out.

"Oh yeah. Well, there was some time when Ben didn't like you Ti, I guess that happened when you were both older though," Devin suggests (he assumed he was recalling that from when Tina was born- made more sense in his head if things happened that way). "Don't worry, he got over not liking you though…sort of," Devin offers teasing a bit.

Quinn laughs quietly at the clearly confused friend of Tina's older brother and unfortunately that's when his eyes turn to her with a whole lot of interest.

With a charming smile Devin asks while keeping his eyes on Quinn's, "And who's the beautiful guest you guys brought with you tonight?"

Quinn can't believe she's being hit on. It used to happen all the time, but since everyone at school found out she's pregnant it hasn't happened at all. She supposes that either he figures she's just a little heavy or that the combination of the height of the table and the loose drape of her sweater are hiding her figure. She feels the need to squash this immediately though (and it worries her that she can't justify that feeling). So she smiles and jumps in before Tina or Bruce can say anything (both of whom look highly amused at the situation), "I'm Quinn- Tina's _pregnant_ friend."

"Oh," he says, his face falling in disappointment. But after half a beat his face is lighting up with a smile (clearly it's occurred to him with a girl that's pregnant, there's no worry of getting her pregnant- score) and he repeats much happier, "Oh."

Seriously, that didn't work?

"She's sixteen Devin," Tina interjects before Devin can continue hitting on Quinn.

"Jailbait, gotcha. Yeah, I can't go down that road again," Devin responds, much to the concern and confusion of everyone at the table. Finally he decides to do his job and asks if anyone wants anything to drink and promises to return with their orders and to take their meal orders promptly.

By way of explanation for Devin, Bruce extends, "You know how most people have that friend who will do anything with the slightest prompting and don't even need to be drunk to do it-"

"Like deciding that he could snowboard off of a two story roof without an actual snowboard, instead substituting an ironing board," Tina interjects an example.

"That's the kind of friend Devin's been in Ben's life," Bruce finishes.

"Oh," Quinn responds, not really sure what to do with that. She feels like she should say something positive about the person that's apparently a friend of Tina's older brother so she says, "He's…friendly."

Bruce laughs a little because that was a pretty nice (and interesting) way of describing Devin. He changes the topic (Devin wasn't that interesting), "So Quinn, what looks good to you? Anything you're craving? With our youngest Tina's mom had a pretty serious Mexican food craving at all hours of the day and night."

"I haven't had any really strong cravings," she scans over the menu again as she continues, "I'm not sure what I'm going to get though. What do you two like here?"

"Anything barbequed for me and Tina tends to favor the chicken items on the menu," Bruce answers. He considers what she said, how she doesn't seem familiar with this place, and asks, "Have you never been here?"

"No. My parents weren't fans of chain restaurants and especially not barbeque," Quinn answers. She knows it makes her parents sound like snobs, but given that they are snobs, that really can't be avoided.

"Well if this is your first time here then I think we need to do a smorgasbord. What do you say Ti, up for a variety?" Bruce proposes.

"Sure," Tina easily agrees.

"How about you Quinn? We'll order five entrees, get some extra plates and have a little bit of everything. And we'll get some appetizers too," Bruce offers.

She'd hate for Bruce to pay for all that, but a lot of things on the menu sound good right now (it's been a while since lunch) so she accepts, "That sounds like a great idea." She's definitely going to contribute to what will probably be a hefty bill though.

When Devin returns he refrains from hitting on Quinn as he takes their order, though his eyes do very obviously stray to her chest multiple times. His lack of ability to control this urge amuses everyone at the table.

"So Quinn," Bruce begins after Devin leaves to put their order in, "from what Tina explained it sounds to me like there's parts of your story missing."

As Quinn's brows furrow, completely lost, Tina offers after an admonishing quiet exclamation of "dad!", "Everyone is still getting to know you is all. We're all still getting to know each other. That's all."

Not catching on to the fact that this was a topic Tina didn't think Quinn would appreciate, Bruce continues on, "No, I wasn't talking about in general. I meant how you said that Quinn has some kind of mysterious history with Puck that no one's been able to figure out past you all knowing that there was something- obviously." Bruce, smiling a little because he thought this was just your average conversation, continues to Quinn, "So Quinn, what's up with that?"

"Um," she responds, stunned that she's being asked about this. People tended to respect her privacy on everything surrounding the baby. Burt talked to her about her pregnancy and how she was feeling, but mostly by telling stories about his wife when she was pregnant and not asking anything that felt intrusive. Bruce seemed friendly enough, but this felt odd to be asked about something that no one, not even Kurt (okay, he dropped not so subtle hints about it sometimes) had asked her to discuss.

"Dad," Tina jumps in, "I don't think that Quinn wants to talk about it. If she did, everyone would already know about it."

"Pssh," Bruce waves off, "Why not talk about it though? Plus I'm really curious and you can tell us, and probably the rest of your friends in the glee club- they seem like good kids. No one's going to go spreading stories around. It can always help to have the truth out there though, to have people understand." Bruce really doesn't understand what the big deal is and why no one is willing to just ask. When Tina had told him (numerous times now) that no one knew or understood how Quinn and Puck had a history, just that they did in some way since she's pregnant, he asked Tina if anyone asked either one of them what happened and she said no one had. He didn't get that. Why not just ask? If she really didn't want to talk about it (though he had a bad feeling if that was the case- did anyone ask if this…situation was forced on her?), then fine, but maybe she needed more people to talk to. It sounded like her family wasn't reliable on that front. He offers, "How about this. How about we each tell one thing no one at the table knows? It's a quick way to get to know someone and to trust them." It didn't seem like Tina had a very solid friendship with Quinn yet so this could possibly help and Bruce liked for his kids friends to like and trust him too- it was a good way to stay more involved in his kids' lives (which, unfortunately, he didn't get to be a part of full time since the divorce).

Bruce seemed to be trying so hard. At what, Quinn wasn't quite sure. But she had a feeling that if she said no he'd be horribly disappointed. Plus, they hadn't even gotten their appetizers yet. There was a lot of dinner to go and it would probably be awkward if she turned him down. It was only one secret, so she agrees, "Okay."

"I'll go first," Bruce volunteers and braces himself for the reaction from his daughter, "Yesterday, I test drove three motorcycles."

"You promised you weren't going to get one again," Tina immediately admonishes.

"I know, I know," Bruce responds, feeling a bit guilty. "But I miss my bike. Well, not during this weather, but it's been so long since I had one and I really miss it. Plus, I don't have your mom to object anymore." He can see that Tina is bothered by this, so he offers, "I know you think it's more dangerous than a normal car-"

"Mom said you were in three accidents in three years," Tina interjects.

Bruce sighs, "Yes. Okay, it's a little unsafe. But…I don't have a lot right now Ti. I've got you kids and…having a bike again would be nice. Not that I'm definitely getting one and if I did it wouldn't be until spring or summer, but…I could really use something fun, you know?"

Tina tries, "If I find you something else fun before you get another motorcycle, would you consider not getting one again?"

"Sure," Bruce easily agrees with a smile. He really wants a bike again, but he can't say no to his little girl either.

"Good," Tina declares, "I'll go next. Sometimes lately…it's been bugging me that Artie doesn't…initiate."

Quinn's slightly confused. It sounds like Tina's talking about her and Artie's physical relationship, but the idea that she would do that in front of her dad throws Quinn. She must be mistaken and Tina must be talking about something else, right?

"Like how you had to kiss him first? I knew that would be an issue. Don't get me wrong Ti, I'm glad Artie isn't more…aggressive, but…well, Quinn, have you ever had to be the one to kiss a boy first?" Bruce responds and asks.

Oh, so she was right about what she thought Tina was saying. Is it fairly typical for a girl to talk so openly with her dad, she wondered? She had never seen Mercedes with her dad and Rachel was clearly keeping certain things from both of hers (though, it did seem like they had a pretty open relationship). Personally, she couldn't imagine ever talking to her dad about boys like Tina seems to with her dad. But as Bruce asks her a question, clearly trying to make some sort of point and not to be nosey, she's starting to understand why Tina would share so much with him. "No," Quinn answers honestly (though with Finn she had to drop a subtle hint that she'd be okay with him moving from kissing her cheek to her mouth).

"See, most boys, if they like you, then they definitely want to kiss you and a whole lot more. And I know Artie likes you so he definitely wants to do all sorts of things with you that I worry about, but I don't think it's just the fact that Artie's a nice guy that's keeping him from trying. Then, you have to wonder, what else does he want that he's holding back on, what else isn't he saying or doing? I think you need to talk to him, something's up," Bruce advises.

She appreciated what her dad suggested, but Tina had to point out, "That's what you said a couple of weeks ago when he didn't call me at all one day and over Thanksgiving when he kind of ignored me, but he apologized for that and there were other circumstances for him not calling. Everything was fine those times."

"Yeah, it seems like you worked those out okay," Bruce concedes, "But I still think Artie's having some kind of other issue. He's crazy about you, as he should be, and a guy doesn't let a dead cell phone and his mother tying up his house phone stop him from talking to the girl he's nuts for. I know you said nothing about that day was out of the ordinary, but I think you missed something and I think that if you really want things to work out with Artie, you should talk to him more, try to find out if something's going on with him."

Voice quiet with a hint of fear, Tina asks, "What if there _is_ something wrong?"

"Then you'll figure it out and you'll be fine," Bruce answers immediately with a reassuring smile.

Tina smiles at her dad, grateful for his support and understanding, as Quinn finds that though Bruce seems different from the other parents she's met, he has one important thing in common with them. Like everyone else's parents it seemed, Bruce worked to have an honest and real relationship with his kids. (Mind straying to the future, part of Quinn hopes that she finds parents for her baby that would do the same. And the other part of her hopes that she gets to be one of them.)

Bruce pats Tina on the back and turns his smile to Quinn as he tells her, "Your turn Quinn."

She knows Bruce is hoping her secret is about her history with Puck- he seemed so intrigued by the mystery surrounding it. And she supposed everyone in glee club was probably just as curious (and very nicely respecting their privacy). Since they didn't know the truth though, did that mean that they all probably thought that her and Puck were just fooling around behind Finn's back and that's all that they were? Not only for how horrible that makes her sound (though really not any worse than the things they all know she's done- like lying to Finn), she really doesn't like that they could all believe that. So she decides that Bruce will get his wish and though she doesn't want everyone to know their whole story, she's going to clear up the start. She offers, "I used to spend every afternoon at a bar- just to get away from my parents. Well, not a real bar exactly. They didn't actually serve alcohol and I've never really drank anyway."

"Foster's?" Bruce asks, thinking that the place she described sounded like it.

"Yes," Quinn confirms, surprised that he knows it.

"I spent a lot of nights hanging out there right after the divorce- didn't feel like being alone in the little apartment I had moved to and they had a good, small crowd of regulars. Plus the owners are great people," Bruce explains his familiarity with the place. Realizing that there were no longer owner_s_, he asks, "Did you get to meet both the owners? Foster died a while back."

"Yeah, I got to meet them both," Quinn confirms and knows that Bruce must be picking up on a timeline a bit, but she wanted this to be clear to both of them. She continues, "It was last spring that I was there a lot actually. One day Puck walked in with his sister- stopping to use the bathroom- and he was kind of in a bind. His mom was out of town and he needed to get to work so I offered to watch his sister. I started babysitting Kelyn every day at Foster's and somehow that lead to spending time with Puck."

"So you two were together before you were with Finn?" Tina checks.

"Yes," Quinn answers simply knowing that it was technically true even if their history was more complicated than that.

"So what led to the…baby," Bruce begins, looking a bit uncomfortable with how to phrase his words, "was that like a backslide?"

"Sort of," Quinn answers. It wasn't exactly just sex with an ex, but Quinn wasn't sure that she wanted to expand on her answer. She didn't want to share everything between them with anyone (somehow it seemed like that would make it…less). But she's still very far from reaching the amount of information she told her sister so she adds, "But with the intent of the backslide being permanent. Then, before I could even tell Finn, we fell apart."

Bruce lets out a breath and says sympathetically, "That must have been rough." He sighs and offers, "Not too long after we got married, Connie and I had this horrible fight. I thought it might have been the end. But our marriage ending after a month? Neither of us wanted that and that just made us…drop it. We ignored what started the fight and everything said during it and we just moved on, became preoccupied with other things. That's always a bad idea though- ignoring something. You learn that eventually or you just keep getting screwed by it. That's why I hope Tina talks to Artie and I hope you did or will talk to Puck about whatever messed you up- even if it's not to get your relationship back, considering what you two are doing now, it'd probably be a good idea to talk. I've never experienced talking turning out to be a bad idea."

There's something about Bruce that's different as he's talking. Waves of sadness and regret rolling off of him, Quinn thinks. She doesn't want to end up like that and besides, his advice wasn't exactly new to her (though it was reinforcing to hear it in another circumstance with a little more support for the idea). "My sister was just giving me the same advice actually," Quinn tells him.

"She sounds like a genius," Bruce jokes, seeming to slip back into his normal jovial state easily.

"Well she is Ben's age and older is wiser. You know all about that, right dad?" Tina ribs her dad.

"Old?" Bruce balks, "I'm not old. I just have a lot of life experience."

Like he didn't say anything Tina continues, "Which is why you really shouldn't get a motorcycle. I mean, ignoring all of the added dangers, how do you think you'll look on a motorcycle now? Not like you used to when you were young. Now you'll be that old guy on a motorcycle with everyone who sees you wondering what mid-life crisis possessed you to get it."

"I'm not old," Bruce repeats. After a beat of consideration he realizes, "Though you have a point. Getting a motorcycle at this point in my life could look just like a guy my age getting a sports car. I may have to wait a while. And maybe I should just put the money toward season tickets to the Blue Jackets instead."

"But you hate the Blue Jackets," Tina points out (not that she disagreed with her dad or that he was coming around to one of her points).

"_You_ hate the Blue Jackets. They're not my favorite team, but season tickets would mean getting to see a lot of games and that's all I care about," Bruce retorts.

Quinn watches the exchange between Bruce and Tina. They seem to have such a natural flow with each other. Though since it seemed that they talked a lot that made sense. What didn't make sense to Quinn in the conversation was the Blue Jackets. She was positive that they weren't a football team and she was pretty sure they weren't a basketball team or baseball team, but not completely certain. That only left hockey though, which she really knew almost nothing about. (Bruce will bring them up again later and it will finally be clear to her that they are indeed a hockey team- from Columbus.)

Their appetizers arrive and they continue to talk. Bruce likes to joke a lot and many of the ones he tells are kind of dirty, which is also apparently something he does with his kids because Tina didn't seem thrown by this at all. As they continue to talk as they wait for their dinners, Quinn learns that Bruce is a computer software engineer in Findlay- he took a promotion that got him out of town for the better part of the day after the divorce. Also, Tina's mom's boyfriend moved in with her in their old family house about three years ago. Tina doesn't get the relationship (said that the boyfriend was weird- her mom is his secretary now though she had previously been a stay at home mom), but Bruce defends that Connie is a smart woman and therefore Tina should trust her decisions. Quinn can't put her finger on it, but she thinks she's starting to get what Tina said about there being something odd about her dad and her mom and the divorce.

When Devin comes back with the food he prefaces to Quinn, "I'm not hitting on you again, but you look really familiar. Do you come here often or something?"

"She's never been here," Bruce jumps in, skeptical that Devin truly wasn't hitting on an under aged girl again.

Remembering what Tina said about her brother and how Devin is apparently a friend of his, Quinn guesses, "Well sometimes I get that I look like my sister. I think she was in your year in high school- Jessica Fabray." Personally, Quinn didn't think that they looked alike much at all, especially given Jessica's tendency to frequent tanning salons and change her hair color (there was once a horrible month where she tried to be a red-head- it did not suit her).

"Oh my God! That's it! Jessica Fabray? Wow," Devin exclaims, lighting up at the mention of the name. "Ben and me- and well every guy at school- were practically obsessed with her. Seriously. She left a notebook in our English class our junior year and Ben and I literally came to blows over who would get to return it to her. Because that one act was the only time we'd ever get to talk to her for even a second. I won. You should ask her if she remembers me. Oh, and maybe if she'd want to get a drink with me some time," Devin says hopefully, not realizing that there could be snags in that idea. He continues on without waiting for a response, excited, "What's she doing now anyway? Please say living at home with your parents and desperate enough to lower her standards," he says crossing his fingers.

Devin seems so elated that Quinn felt like answering his question was going to be like kicking a puppy. But she reminded herself of his skeeviness in hitting on her and tells him, "She's married and living in Reading, Pennsylvania. She's Jessica Hart now."

His face falls a little, but perks back up as he asks, "_Happily_ married?"

"Very," she answers knowing it was true. Her sister somehow managed to have a marriage that was the complete opposite of their parents (she hoped she'd be that lucky, but had always had a feeling that she wouldn't).

Devin lets out long sigh and says despondently, "Damn." He bounces back after a beat of silence and tells them, "Well, enjoy your dinners. And next time Jessica's in town, try to eat here- I work most nights. It'd be awesome to have talked to her twice in my life even if she is married."

"I'll try to persuade her," Quinn tells Devin because she doesn't have the heart to tell him that it's probably not likely going to happen given her sister's current inability to travel and the fact that Jessica's a vegetarian and the menu here was very meat-centric.

Devin finally leaves them to eat and after everyone's taken something from each plate and dug in, Bruce tells them, "You know, I actually remember Ben always mentioning some girl from school named Jessica who he had a crush on. Though Ben had a lot of crushes in high school and not too many dates- took a while to realize what a catch he is. So besides getting married, moving to Pennsylvania, and, it sounds like, being a pretty great older sister, what's your sister been doing for the eight years they've been out of high school?"

"Well, she went to Northwestern and got a degree in communications- my parents ad something to do with her decision about her major. She met her husband, Eric, their sophomore year, he was majored in business, and they got married right after they graduated. His dad was sick, with cancer, so they moved to Reading to be close to is parents, opened up a chain of UPS stores, and they were doing pretty well with that but it's taken a hit in this economy and now they're selling some of their stores," Quinn explains quickly so she can get back to eating (she couldn't take bites while talking- it was ingrained in her to believe that to be very rude).

From there they continue talking about Quinn's sister and Bruce's kids/Tina's siblings. They also talk about Bruce's grandkids- he has three. His oldest daughter has a boy and a girl and Ben had a son with his current fiancé two years ago.

As they talk, Quinn finally figures out why it is that it feels like there's something odd about Bruce and why Tina had a hard time explaining it. It was stringing together all the things he'd say regarding his ex-wife that helped Quinn figure it out. Like how he said with such warmth that Tina got her effervescence from Connie and how he talked about how she was "adorably frantic" towards the end of her first pregnancy. Bruce was still in love with the woman he married thirty years ago. The complication with that seemed to be that Connie wasn't the woman she was thirty years ago. Quinn can understand now why Tina had such a hard time trying to explain her dad. How does one explain that he's in love with a woman that doesn't exist anymore- a fact he seems to understand sometimes and doesn't others?

It makes Quinn worry, Bruce's situation. He was proof that someone could be in love with the same person from the point that they met them, for the rest of their life. But at the same time he was proof that that didn't guarantee a happily ever after. He didn't get to fall in love with a person who loved him the same way and now he gets to still be in love with her and a broken heart at the same time.

After this realization, there's something so sad about Bruce that Quinn can't shake seeing an air of tragedy around him even as he very warmly hugs her goodbye and jokes about her baby kicking him (she didn't) as he does so. She manages to smile as he tells her that they'll do this again, make a plan of introducing her to all of the chain restaurants in the area, and that he's going to be calling just to check in with her. Still as she hugs him back, heads home, and tells her sister and Puck about her night, she feels sad for Bruce. (And she fears she'll meet the same fate as him because Puck already seemed to change so quickly and what if…she's not supposed to be thinking about this. She tells herself to forget about it. She tries to only think of Bruce as a great father and cheery and friendly man. And she tries to remind herself that this isn't the time for thinking about the future and matters of her heart aren't important in her life for now or a long while anyway.)

Quinn sleeps restlessly that night, which is unfortunate given that her workday starts early on Saturday.

-o-o-o-

Puck's week goes pretty much how he expected.

He had hoped Quinn would come by Friday night, but once she calls and explains what she did instead he gets why she would chose making new friends over coming over. She needed friends, she didn't have a lot right now.

Using the Foreman grill was interesting. He thought the food he made with it tasted fine. Kelyn disagreed, but she was picky and in a bad mood (he may have hid her Beiber CD- he needed a break). His mom seemed to find his grilled chicken good enough too because she told him he'd be doing the same thing next Tuesday when she goes out to look at houses again. He still doesn't see how they're going to afford to buy a house, but apparently he doesn't know everything and Rachel's dad was supposed to be wicked good at this stuff anyway so he figured he's just going to have to go along with all this and hope it works out (and hope Kel will eat the same dinner Tuesday- he doesn't want to learn something new; it took him over two hours just to make the chicken).

He works Saturday and Hank tells him that on Monday he'll get to meet the rest of the guys and start working with them, which means he's finally going to start getting a pay check. He won't be getting much more than minimum wage and when school starts again he won't be able to work much, but it'll be better than nothing. Plus, Hank pats him on the back and tells him, just like he's stating a fact, "You learned quick." He feels really good about that. Like it's not as far fetched of an idea as it's always felt like that he could actually make something decent out of himself.

He has Sunday off. Quinn's working all day and he considers stopping by just to see her, but he doesn't want to seem like he's stalking her so he refrains. His mom and sister head to the movies to see a chick-flick and a kid's movie. They try to get him to come, but that's never happening (those kind of movies, with them, in public- no way). Since he doesn't have any homework given the school break, this leaves him with absolutely nothing all day for the first time in a long time.

After an hour of playing his X-box and about a half an hour of surfing the web on his new computer for brass knuckles (what? He was just looking), he figures maybe he should keep studying the books Hank gave him. He hadn't gotten to it much lately with actually doing his school work and studying for his finals.

As he reads though, he finds he can't concentrate. Something is nagging him and the most annoying part of it is that he can't figure out what it is. It's like there's something that he knows he should be thinking about, worrying about, but he's not sure what it is. There's all the stuff about the baby and the future, naturally, but he knows he can't do anything about any of it right now. There's Quinn, but he's already set on what he's doing about her. He knows she doesn't want to think about relationships right now so he's not really pursuing anything like that with her. He is preparing for the day she's ready though by, for her and for their daughter, trying to make good choices and be a good person not just when he's around her but all the time. That way, maybe someday, he'll be the guy she needs all the time instead of the guy that couldn't last twenty-four hours being the guy she needed like before when they imploded.

There's nothing nagging him about his family. (Okay, maybe he feels a little guilty for still having Kel's CD.) They both nag, but there's nothing he can think of about them that could lead to this feeling he can't shake.

He hopes eventually he'll figure it out as it's agitating the crap out of him.

(When he talks to Quinn that night, the nagging increases. Unfortunately, he doesn't notice.)

Monday morning over coffee and donuts at Hank's, Puck meets the seven guys that work for Hank. They all seem like pretty nice guys. Most of them are younger- mid twenties to mid thirties. Hank tells him later that eventually most guys start their own business or just go independent- hence the younger average age of his employees.

After introducing him, Hank tells his guys that Puck is going to get his license in a year when he turns eighteen, but until then he needs work so he's going to work with anyone who needs an extra pair of hands on a job. He gives out Puck's number and tells the other guys to call him if they want him to help with something- remember he'll be in school again come January.

Then Hank mentions some job they may get. Puck doesn't really follow it, but it kind of sounds like some kind of big job that everyone would work together.

This younger seeming guy named Grant says he could use a hand today. He's working on a previously foreclosed upon apartment complex- doing the electrical and updating the heating. It's supposed to take him all the way up until Christmas to finish it, but with some help he may get out of there early enough to actually do some Christmas shopping before Christmas Eve.

After telling Puck what they'll be doing as he drives them to the apartment building, Grant dives into the personal questions without a care. "So Hank said you're starting working early cause you need money? What for? Debt? Family problems? Something you're saving to buy? Cause your truck looked kind like a trash heap- no offense."

"Family stuff, I guess," Puck answers shortly. He really doesn't care if people know about his situation and especially didn't care what people thought of it, but he wasn't sure if he liked this guy yet and he certainly wasn't going to share with a guy he kind of felt like punching.

"That's cool," Grant returns and begins rambling, "yeah, I have this job because of family stuff kind of too. If I didn't have to pay for my kid I'd probably have moved on to trying a tech school or something by now. But child support is a bitch- kind of like my ex. Not that I don't want to provide for my son, I do, I want him to have everything, they're just kind of strict about paying and amounts and stuff."

Puck glances at the guy, he can't be more than twenty five years old. He wonders how old his kid is. Maybe he started young too. Well, the guy's already been pretty nosy with him so he figures he might as well just ask. "How old is your son?"

"He'll be six next month," Grant answers and then starts rambling again, "I was nineteen when he was born and so was his mom. I had been out of high school a little while, I didn't have a job, hadn't even been looking for one. I was still mouching off my parents, but he changed that."

"How long were you with his mom?" Puck asks because it seemed like the guy didn't have a problem sharing and he wondered if maybe having a kid made everything fall apart (it was one of many worries he had for the future- he didn't want them to end again).

"Not long at all," Grant says with a laugh, "We weren't even together by the time she found out she was pregnant. We had a couple of weeks of fun before her personality got in the way and we both wanted out. To be fair though, I knew she was a bitch before I hit on her and I went after her anyway because she was super hot. She's a good mom though- despite how much she's always on my case for everything."

Puck's not usually compelled to be nice, but since Grant has shared so much, he feels compelled not to hold back so much as he was initially inclined to do. He doesn't feel like sharing the whole long story (besides they'll probably be at their destination before he could), so he just offers, "I'm having a kid…kind of. Maybe, I guess. We're not really sure what we're going to do yet."

"But either way you need the job," Grant puts together easily. Returning a form of the question asked of him he asks, "How long have you been with your girl?"

"A day, a week, I don't know. That's a complicated issue and a long-ass story," Puck returns, frustration clear in his tone.

"Usually seems to be," Grant comments, "We're not all as lucky as Hank was." They arrive at the apartment complex and when they get to work Grant continues this last thought by asking Puck if he knew Hank's story. Despite very clearly saying that he did, Grant proceeds to ramble about Hank's history for hours.

Puck's not so sure he's going to like this Grant guy, but he's working with him for the rest of the week regardless. He tries to tune him out and just do what he's told.

After a second full day of working with Grant Tuesday, Puck's still not sure if he likes the guy much. He doesn't hate him and he doesn't really have the urge to hit him or anything. But hopefully when this job is done, next week he'll get to work with someone else.

Tuesday is a pretty good day though because after picking Kelyn up from a friend's house he gets a surprise. Quinn had the night off and decided to help him out making dinner.

It's nice. Cooking (or attempting to cook) usually frustrates him, but having Quinn in his kitchen making stuff while she tells him what to do in between telling him about her day and how everyone's parents have been calling her lately to check in on her, it's nice. It's normal. And if someone told him a year ago that all it would take for him to have a great night would be to be at home and cooking with a girl he'd think they're crazy (and probably beat them up). But things are different now. He's different now. And a night at home with Quinn is the nicest kind of night he can imagine.

Everything almost goes wrong when his mom walks through the door though. He had told Quinn that she was at one of her AA meetings because he still wasn't sure that he should tell Quinn that his mom is looking for a house (when he still hasn't contributed any money toward the baby), let alone one with an extra room for the baby or her and the baby. Then his mom came home talking about some really crappy house she just saw and thank God Quinn was in the bathroom or he would have had some explaining to do about why his mom was looking at houses and not at AA like he lied.

May wasn't exactly happy about the lie (she didn't see the harm in telling Quinn that they're looking to move), but she lets Puck persuade her into it before Quinn gets out of the bathroom. The things she does for that kid.

After a whole night of hanging out with Quinn (and his family), the thing that he should be worried about finally hits Puck as he's trying to fall asleep. He's pretty sure Quinn believes that his family really will be her family no matter what and he thinks she's enjoying being a part of his family so far (he owes his mom so huge for that). But they're still not her family. Just because she has them now doesn't really make the fact that she can't see the one member of her family that actually feels like and acts like family toward her any better. And it especially can't be easy to be away from her only family and alone on Christmas, which has always just been another day to him and his family, but he knows it's a big deal to Quinn.

He really should do something about all this, he knows. So in between working on Wednesday he spends some time on google maps, talks to his mom (just to make sure his thinking is sound and he's actually got a good idea here), and he makes a plan.

_**To be continued…**_

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**A/N: I hope you enjoyed the chapter!**

First, for those of you still in high school or younger reading this, do not leave campus when you're not supposed to. Though it may have sounded fun and even smart at the start of the chapter, truancy contracts are a bitch so don't ditch.

Second, again, the second part will be posted in a few days or so. Though knowing that people are done reading this less massive first half would be helpful in knowing when it's okay to post the second part so **PLEASE REVIEW.** I'd really love to hear from anyone who's actually still reading despite how long this story is taking me to update and complete.

Third, I'm considering briefly exploring (in short, twenty page or less, one-shot form) some other fandom's in the not too distant future. Of course I will only be doing that if I don't feel behind in this story for a change so you don't have to worry about anything else you may see from me if you have me on author alert interfering with the writing of this story (and if you do have me on author alert- thanks!). And for anyone who's curios about what other fandom's you could possibly see me writing for, right now I'm feeling like writing some _Veronica Mars_ or possibly _Community _or _How I Met Your Mother_ maybe.

I hope everyone is having a great week- especially those of you on spring break!


	18. Chapter 15, Part 2

**A/N: Thank you so much to all of the amazing people who are not only still actually reading this story, but who were kind enough to review!** You're awesome and hopefully that gets acknowledged by everyone you know on a daily basis.

This would be the massive second half of the chapter, the posting of which was slightly delayed by 1.) me getting sick briefly soon after posting part one, and 2.) the fact that today is my birthday and in the impending hoopla it was a little hard to find time to proofread (sorry if I missed anything- I was working quickly).

**Random side note:** A while ago a reader suggested that I get a Tumblr account. I've actually had this suggested to me before by another reader and some good points were made about why I should get one. I am notoriously horrible at keeping up with any kind of social networking site and I really don't want to start something that I'm going to end up forgetting about within a week because I've found no use for it so I promised the person that asked that I'd put the decision in the hands of you ladies reading (I'm assuming it's mostly ladies reading- but correct me if any of you are gentlemen). If you'd be interested in following (that's what you do on there, right?) me on Tumblr to learn about what progress I'm making on the chapter or possibly other fics in the future or, more than likely, what's keeping me from making progress on updating, please let me know in a review or PM. Thank you.

Okay I'll stop rambling so you can get on to reading this enormous second part of the chapter and so I can get on with celebrating the crap out of my birthday!

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**Cheated Hearts **

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_**XV. This season your'e all that I need- part two **_

When she wasn't working it seemed like the last five and a half days for Quinn had been filled with people talking to her about Christmas.

It started last Saturday with Burt. Or rather it started with Kurt just happening to be at the mall with Burt right around her dinner break. She really should have caught on to why Kurt was asking about when she usually got her breaks. Though it did seem like they had an authentic excuse for being there as Burt was trying to take advice from Kurt about what to get Carol for Christmas (though personally, for a month long relationship, Quinn thought jewelry was a little much). Anyway, over a quick dinner at the closest restaurant to the mall, Burt mentions that Christmas morning they'll be heading to his sister's in Dayton and if she didn't have anything going on she was more than welcome to join them. (Kurt pulls her aside and says, "Fair warning, my aunt's idea of an appetizer is opening a bag of pork rinds. We'd have a good time. _Definitely_. But the food will be atrocious.")

Then Sunday morning, over a quick breakfast with the Abrams family (sans Malcolm- he's not back yet), Mary and Tom tell her that she's welcome to join their family to celebrate the holiday. They go to midnight mass and then spend a quiet day at home, just the four of them usually as Tom's parents have passed away and Mary's family is spread out all over the country, none of them close. Though in the ladies room later Mary warns her that there will be _Die Hard_ movies involved in their Christmas celebrations. She explains that it used to be a Christmas tradition for the boys to go hunting on Christmas, but after the accident it wasn't an option anymore. Then, about two Christmases after the accident, she was very sick on Christmas day which left the boys on their own and they started watching the first _Die Hard_ and then the rest of them and she realized that it was another bonding activity for her husband and their sons so when they made a tradition of it she never objected. They needed something else they could do together on Christmas and still get that boost of machismo. She'd love to have someone else to hang out in the kitchen with eating cookies as the men have their movie marathon though so she makes it very clear that despite the tradition that probably doesn't sound too appealing, Quinn is very encouraged to join them if she wants.

Sunday night Mercedes' mom, Gloria, takes the phone away from her daughter while they're talking and asks what Quinn's Christmas plans are. Quinn stutters that she's not sure yet, but she has plenty of options. (She never knew what to say in the face of an invitation- had been relying on, "Thank you. I'm not sure what I'm doing yet. But I appreciate the offer and I'll consider it,"). Gloria doesn't invite her anywhere. Instead she says that they're unfortunately headed to her in-laws and, trust her, that is not a place Quinn would want to go to. In fact, if she could skip it and hang out with Quinn instead, Gloria would. She then tells her that she'll be calling in a couple of days to make sure Quinn has somewhere to go so she better pick one of her offers.

Rachel's dads stop by the gift-wrap department on Monday. They say that they know she's used to celebrating Christmas, but if she wants the chance to avoid it then she's more than welcome to join them in their traditional homemade pizza and Barbra Streisand movie marathon.

(This one's a little more tempting than the other offers. She thinks it'd be weird to be a part of some other family's Christmas celebration and she's worried it'd depress her- reminding her of what she didn't have with her family anymore and would never have again. So maybe spending the day ignoring that it was Christmas would be good for her.

Or maybe it would depress her no matter where she ends up because she's all alone everywhere.)

During one of her breaks Monday, as she's wandering the store a bit (it felt like Christmas here, like it did every year, it was a nice comfort), Quinn comes across Mr. Schue in the kitchen department looking at plastic margarita glasses. He catches sight of her and smiles and waves so she walks over to him (she doesn't know if she would have stopped to say hi if he hadn't seen her- sometimes everyone's concern just reminded her of everything her life was missing).

"Hi Quinn! Are you working? Or are you done now or just heading in?" Mr. Schue asks with a warm smile.

"Yeah, I'm working, just on break," Quinn answers.

He nods and offers, "I was going to stop by gift-wrap to see if you were here when I was done shopping…and to buy wrapping paper."

"Actually the wrapping paper here is kind of over priced when you just buy a roll or two instead of getting it gift-wrapped. You'd be better off buying it at Target or any drug store really," she informs him because more than six dollars for a roll with less than twenty square feet on it was ridiculous and she knew he didn't exactly have extra money to be throwing away.

"Oh. I didn't know that. Terri used to just have stuff like that at the house- I've never really paid any attention to it. It's a really good thing you happened to be here," Mr. Schue tells her, smiling.

"If you get your stuff wrapped though, I could use my employee discount on it for you," Quinn offers.

"I might have to take you up on that. Or buy gift bags so I don't 'butcher' wrapping paper- as Terri used to put it," he sort of accepts, grateful. He puts the plastic glass he had been holding down and comments, "But first I have to actually find gifts. I thought that maybe I'd get my mom these plastic margarita glasses because she keeps breaking the glass ones. I don't know if I really like the idea of getting her something that would encourage her drinking though. And I know what to get my dad, but I have to go to a bookstore and office supply store for that. Everyone else though, I'm not sure what I'm going to buy for anyone." He paused before he said "everyone." He didn't have that many other people besides his parents to buy for. There was one person that he probably didn't have to buy anything for, but he wanted to- he needed to do something to try and make things better.

"Well I wish I could stay and try to help, but I have to get back. My break is ending. Good luck though. And come back if you want anything wrapped," Quinn tells him and makes a fairly quick exit- as quick as she could while still being polite. She saw the store manager heading in the direction of her department and though she knew she could take the last couple of minutes of her break, just in case there was any chance at all of turning this temporary job into a longer term one, she wanted to only make good impressions on the guy and that meant not being on break when he stopped by.

Two hours later Mr. Schue does drop by with two things to be wrapped. The first is a massaging foot spa for his mom. The second is jewelry. She can tell by the box it's in and she has to make sure whatever it is, is laying nicely before she wraps it- it's part of the job. But this is someone she knows (buying for someone else she knows) so it feels a little like an invasion of privacy to just go ahead and do her job so she asks before opening it, "May I?"

Mr. Schue nods as he says, "Of course." He knows it's part of the job. Plus if he was Quinn he'd be too curious to resist.

Inside the jewelry box is a white gold diamond snowflake pendant with a delicate white gold chain. "It's beautiful," Quinn compliments because it's true. Mr. Schue doesn't say anything, doesn't offer who the gift is for like he did with the other gift. But she knows who the gift is for and has a decent idea of the situation surrounding it (it was clear to everyone in glee club at this point- even Brittany- that Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury were not on very good terms right now and hadn't been for a little over a month). So she adds figuring that he may need some reassurance, "I think she'll love it."

Mr. Schue chuckles a little to himself, and says, "I had a feeling everyone knew." He adds after a beat, "And I hope you're right."

Quinn gets to work wrapping his gifts and it doesn't take long for him to come to the question everyone else has had for her lately.

"So what are you doing for Christmas?" he asks.

She sighs a little to herself, exhausted by this topic (and not too keen on thinking of it if she doesn't have to). But she wants to sound fine so she tries to seem moderately perky as she answers, "I'm not sure yet. A lot of people from glee club's parents have invited me to spend the holiday with their families, but I don't know where I'm going yet. Maybe I'll try to stop by a couple of people's places. Although that'll be my only day off this week and right now sleeping at least half the day sounds really good."

Mr. Schue chuckles a little again in understanding and offers, "Well if you end up doing that and miss out on everyone else's celebrations I'm not leaving for my parents until four. If you want to join me, you know where I live. Just come by and I'll drive us there."

"Thank you," she says sincerely. Because even if everyone asking about her plans and talking to her about the holiday has been getting to her in various ways, she really does appreciate everyone's concern and kindness.

He smiles and adds, "Promise me that you won't spend the whole day alone though. That you'll take someone up on their offers."

She's not actually sure that she's going to do that. The idea of spending ample time sleeping did honestly sound _so_ good. But being at home with her parents could be awkward so unless they're going over to someone's house for most of the day she really probably won't want to be there. And not many places will be open on Christmas day so she won't have too many options besides other people's houses. So she tells him, "I promise," fairly sure that she actually means it.

He believes her and smiles and changes the topic to yesterday when he had an epiphany that the glee club should have gone caroling- it would have been an excellent group activity and good practice. This leads to talking about Christmas songs- the good, the bad, and the ugly- while she finishes wrapping his gifts.

Tuesday, thankfully, Quinn doesn't get any visitors at work or any parents calling her. However, when she gets home after work her mom knocks on her door not three seconds after she shuts her bedroom door behind her. (And her dad doesn't appear to be home. Which is weird considering it's after five.)

"Quinn?" she says as she simultaneously knocks and opens the door.

Quinn raises an eyebrow in acknowledgement of her mother as she takes off her coat and hangs it up, but she says nothing and just waits for her mother to say whatever she came to say.

Judy wrings her hands and asks, "How was…work?"

"Fine," Quinn answers. Her mom couldn't seem to get past the pleasantries and dive right in to a point. It made their conversations last just a little bit longer- both a good and a bad thing. She decides to play along with it this time and offers a bit more, "It seems like mostly men get things gift wrapped. I don't know why they wouldn't just buy a gift bag."

"Getting something gift wrapped looks a little more thoughtful. Most of them probably do it for the women in their lives," Judy responds, happy for a moment of normal conversation (or as normal as they got these days).

Quinn sits down on her bed (she _had_ to get off her feet) and waits for her mother again.

Judy wrings her hands again and begins with false brightness, "Well you probably already know because you and Jessica have always been fairly close, but she broke her leg. So she won't be coming this way and since she already has plans to spend Christmas with Eric's family we won't be heading that way. You know your father, he doesn't really like them." She pauses and looks like she regrets what she's going to say next, "So we're going to go away for Christmas. We'll leave for Aspen Thursday morning and we'll be coming back next Tuesday."

They were going to be gone for five days starting on Christmas Eve? Quinn knew she wouldn't be spending the holiday with them, that she'd never have another Christmas with them. But the fact that they weren't even going to be around was a surprise. It takes her a few beats of silence to process before she's able to ask, "But I thought dad used to say that we could never be out of town on Christmas? That we had to be here for Christmas mass to make sure people saw us here, as a family in church?"

"He didn't think that…applied anymore," Judy tries to put it delicately.

Oh. Okay. She can guess that her father probably blames her for that change and she believes he's right. She is the reason everything changed; her actions did this. But so did his. Nothing had to change as much as it did, she knows that, and she knows it's his fault that everything is so radically different (though sometimes the distance between them doesn't feel so different as much as it feels typical).

"I imagine you'll be joining Jessica with Eric's family for Christmas?" Judy inquires.

"No," Quinn answers, "I can't. I'm working until closing, until eight, on Christmas Eve. Then, the day after Christmas, I'm supposed to be there when they open at nine in the morning. Since it's nine hours to Jess's house each way, I don't think I could make it. Unless I sleep either not at all or most of the time I'm there, neither of which sound like good options."

Judy loses her false brightness, asking with concern, "What will you be doing then?"

"Some friends and their families invited me over," Quinn says. There was no point being more specific, her mother wouldn't recognize most, if any, of their names.

"Oh, did…Noah and his family ask you over?" Judy inquires, the name sticking a bit on her tongue (it's the first time she's said his name out loud), as she tries to ask seeming happy about the idea.

Noah…that was new. Quinn doesn't know what to think of it. She responds, "I'm welcome over there any time, but they don't celebrate Christmas. They'll be spending the day together though because May doesn't have to work and neither does Puck. So I'll probably try to stop by."

Judy has a lot she wants to say, but not much that she feels like she can. She asks, "He has a job now too?" because that was brand new information to her.

"Yeah. He may actually have a career…or be on his way to one at least. He got a job working for a general contractor who's going to help him pass the tests to become one himself as soon as he can meet the age qualification next year," Quinn answers, not surprised that she's smiling a little because this was one of those things that Puck had done that gave her faith in him again, that made her really want to trust him despite everything that had happened that gave her reasons not to.

"That's good," Judy says and she's only about half fake-happy as she says it and half real-happy. It's progress.

"Mm-hmm," Quinn agrees as she pries her shoes off her feet. They were hurting too much, she couldn't wait any longer to put her slippers on (like until her mom left).

Judy wrings her hands again, unsure of what to say or do. She doesn't like having such little time like this, and these times being so far from each other. But she can see the time on Quinn's alarm clock and she knows she can't make this moment last any longer even if she wants to despite the uncomfortable edge that always comes with these mini-talks. "Well," she says with a little sigh, "I should be going or I'm going to be late. I'm meeting your father at the club. We're entertaining clients of his." She wishes, "Have a good night."

"You too," Quinn returns, because it's polite and it's still her mom.

Judy's in the hallway with the door almost closed behind her before she pokes her head back in and tells Quinn, "After we leave for our trip, check our room. The bench by the window- I think you know the place."

With that the door is shut behind her and Quinn's left to wonder if her mom meant what she thinks she meant. Inside the bench by the window in her parents room was one place Jessica had showed her years ago as their parent's hiding place for their Christmas gifts. Her parents had realized it after a couple of years and stopped using it, but did her mother's mention of it now mean that she had gotten her a Christmas gift and hid it there from her father and for her to find? She knew that as soon as she's home alone on Thursday, it's going to be the first place she goes.

Which reminds her, she's going to be all alone Christmas day. There won't be any run-ins with her parents or even another sound in the house because there won't be another person there for that day or the four after it. Suddenly, she doesn't feel like being here alone right now and just putting her feet up and reading a trashy magazine as had been her plan for the evening. She gets up and heads to Puck's (and May's and Kelyn's). She doesn't tell him anything about the conversation with her mom, she doesn't want to think about it tonight (hence the need to get out of the lonely house). It's a nice night with the Puckerman's and it makes her feel better…until she gets home. It's silent, her parents asleep, and she knows that the house will feel even emptier than it does right now on Christmas morning, afternoon, and night.

It's then that she decides she needs to make a decision about Christmas. Decide who she's going to spend it with because she can't be alone. So she decides that she'll go to church with the Abrams family at midnight, sleep in for a nice long time, then go to Rachel's in the afternoon and Puck's in the evening. After she gets off work tomorrow, she'll let all the people know that she's taking them up on their offers for at least a short time. (She should probably make sure she talks to Kelyn about coming back over. After all, earlier tonight Kelyn made her promise that it wouldn't be very long before she saw her again.)

Wednesday while she's at work Mr. Cohen-Chang (Bruce) calls. He asks her if she has plans for Christmas and before she can answer he offers that she's welcome to come with him to his oldest daughter's house. She throws a big Christmas for him, any of her siblings that aren't spending Christmas with their mom, and for her husband's whole family and some of their friends. Though she lives in upstate New York so he's leaving tomorrow morning. Quinn thanks him for the offer but explains that not only does she have to work tomorrow and the day after Christmas so such travel isn't feasible, she already has plans with a few friends and their families (she doesn't mention that she has yet to tell any of those people that she's taking them up on their offers- Bruce is a rambler and she's at work so the less said the better). Trusting that she was telling him the truth, he asks about her work schedule so they can make a plan to go out again- he wants to take her to Kewpee's Hamburgers. They decide on lunch in two weeks and he tells her to invite along anyone she wants, he's pretty sure Tina will be bringing Artie.

After work she calls Artie and since Mary answers she tells her that she'd like to come to church with them for midnight mass if that was still okay, which of course it is. Mary offers to pick her up on their way, since she figures Quinn will be awfully tired after working all day, and Quinn tells her that she'll let her know how she feels, if she'll be up to driving, tomorrow night. Then she calls Rachel and after Quinn explains that she won't be taking Rachel's dad up on the offer to spend the whole day there because she'd like to catch up on sleep and she already promised to stop by Puck's (which she didn't, but she did kind of imply it to Kelyn). Rachel thinks it's odd that she's spending most of her Christmas with Jewish people, and that she's only going to be over long enough for one Barbara movie (now she'll have to decide which one would be best to expose Quinn to the greatness of Barbara first- and rearrange her whole movie plan as a result), but she lets it go after only ten minutes of rambling, happy to have someone joining them.

After talking to Jessica and assuring her that she had plans for Christmas now, Quinn calls Puck. She hadn't talked to him yet today so they spend a few minutes catching up about their day's before Quinn gets into what her mother said about being gone and her decisions about what she's going to do Christmas day. Puck just kind of grunts along (she wonders if he's trying to play a video game as he's talking to her). Then she asks to talk to Kelyn to let her know she'll be by on Friday and Puck gets weird. He tells her no, she can't talk to Kelyn and then kind of stumbles that she's not there, she's spending the night at a friend's house. But when he first answered the phone Quinn could have sworn she heard Kelyn in the background. Oh well though. Maybe it was all in her head. She was quite exhausted after all.

Thursday is an extremely long day. Quinn works from nine in the morning until eight at night and they were constantly busy the whole time. Hadn't people ever heard of not waiting until the last minute to do their Christmas shopping? And why couldn't more people just buy gift bags if they couldn't wrap their own gifts? Seriously.

She almost forgets about what a taxing day it's been though when she unlocks the door to her house and it's completely dark and silent. Her parents are gone. For the next five nights. She sighs, takes her shoes off at the door, makes her way around the house turning on several lights (many of them not necessary), and heads to her room to get her slippers before she heads for her parents room.

Only, Quinn doesn't make it into her parent's room. Instead she finds herself stopped outside their door and then turning around a second later. She didn't know why she was nervous. Her mom all but directly told her that there was something in there for her. But what if it wasn't a Christmas gift like she had been thinking? What if it was just a note reminding her to set the alarm at night and before she left the house while they were away or asking her to do something else while they were gone like take out the trash?

She goes down stairs and gets started on the sugar cookies she was planning to bring to everyone she was going to see. She was only going to put a few of them into Christmas shapes since two thirds of the people she's going to see are Jewish.

After the cookie dough is in the refrigerator to chill for as long as it can before she has to bake a batch for Artie's family, Quinn has nothing left to do. She determinedly makes her way upstairs, telling herself the whole time that she's going to go to her parent's room and check the bench like her mom said. She pauses when she gets to their door, but she manages to make herself go through with it anyway. She turns on the light, the room looks the same as ever (pristine), and she kneels down on the ground in front of the bench. She closes her eyes for half a second as she lifts the lid on the window seat bench, but when she opens them she really feels stupid for thinking that she was misunderstanding her mother because her hint that there would be a gift waiting was right. Inside the bench are five very nicely wrapped boxes. And on the top of one of them is a note, just like she had worried would be the only contents in the bench, reminding her to set the alarm (and that was signed, _Merry Christmas. Love, Mom_).

She's a little nervous as she unwraps the first box, unsure of what her mom would get her after everything that's happened, after what her life is now. (What if it's baby clothes? She never talked to her mom about what she may or may not be doing in regards to the baby.) She feels at ease as soon as she makes it past the tissue paper in the box for inside is maternity clothes- designer maternity clothes. First there was a pair of skinny leg maternity jeans by Citizens of Humanity and ponte knit leggings by Everly Grey Maternity. Then a couple of knot front tops by Olian maternity and a warm looking gray wool pea coat by them too. Also a couple of sweaters, nice tops that she might actually still be able to hide her stomach in, and two sweater dresses and another long sleeved casual dress all by Olian and Maternal America Maternity. Finally, in the last box, which Quinn notes is quite heavy, she finds a new pair of snow shoes- Coach. They were rather flat, a rich brown color, tall enough that they'd probably come up to her knees almost, had a thin buckle near the top, rubber soles, and they were fur lined. They seemed like very nice winter boots. Except that they were half a size bigger than all the shoes in her closet. Her mother had bought her shoes before, she knew her size, so why did she buy the wrong one this time?

By the time Quinn cleans up the mess of wrapping paper and has moved her new clothes to her room, it finally occurs to her that she's been prying her shoes off of her feet for a couple of weeks now and the most comfortable thing to wear are her slippers. Perhaps her feet will start swelling soon (she doesn't think they are yet- then her shoes would probably be unbearable) like she read happened to most women eventually during pregnancy. She's not sure why, but she had figured that wouldn't happen until she was in her third trimester. But maybe her mom knew better and if her sore feet are any indication, maybe having boots that are half a size too big will soon come in very handy.

Quinn starts trying on some of her new clothes, considering that the dresses may be nice for church tonight, but after she gets the second dress on (too big at the moment) she's startled by the doorbell.

Downstairs and outside in the increasingly cold night, Puck rocked back in forth on the balls of his feet. Partially to stay warm and partially out of nervousness. He was about to propose a pretty bold idea, one he could regret once he goes through with it, but he knew this was the right thing to do. (Plus his mom had declared it was too and then called him a chicken when he hesitated coming over here for the last hour.)

Quinn doesn't bother checking the peephole (it was unnaturally high and she couldn't reach it) and opens the door surprised to find Puck on her doorstep (and instantly wishing she had changed out of the too-big maternity sweater dress before she answered the door).

"Hi," he greets, wondering if he should have said something else, something smarter.

"Hi," she returns after a second. He had been by her house a few times, but never actually to her house. It's surprising and a little bit weird that he's here.

"Are you going to let me in?" he asks wondering why they were just standing there. Then something occurs to him and he takes a step back fearfully, "Unless…are the evil duo still here?"

That was a new moniker for her parents, though she is sure that's who he's talking about. She shakes her head, takes a step back as she opens the door wider and tells him, "No they're gone. Come in."

He only steps just inside the doorway and she shuts the cold out closing the door behind him.

She's not sure they've ever been alone in a house together. There have been times when everyone else in the house was sleeping, but she can't think of a time when they were completely alone at his apartment and he's never been here so maybe this is a first in a few ways. And it's stupid that it makes her nervous to realize that because her romantic life is on hold until…for a long time. So nothing with them should make her feel anything. (But it does.)

"Are you just stopping by since they're not here and you can now?" Quinn asks since a couple of seconds had passed and he hadn't volunteered a reason for this unexpected visit. "Because you know I'm going to church in a while right?" she checks, just to put it out there that though he's welcome to hang out here while her parents are gone (and she'd like some company), she will have to leave.

"I was kind of hoping you wouldn't," Puck begins cryptically.

"Wh-"

Before she can get the first word of her question out, he continues quickly, "I was hoping to give you your Christmas present."

The mention of a present distracts her from the fact that it sounded like he wanted to rearrange her schedule at the last minute. So instead of questioning that, she asks, "You got me a present? But you don't believe in Christmas and you already got me a Hanukah present." She adds, already feeling bad about it though she doesn't think she could have predicted this, "And I didn't get you anything."

"I'm sure we can negotiate something," he says with a smirk just thinking about the (far fetched) possibilities.

She rolls her eyes (and ignores the fact that she's smiling). He's not volunteering anything again. It's like he mentioned the gift just to make her curious. Which she is so she doesn't wait for him to just tell her already and asks, "Okay so what is this gift exactly that's going to make me miss church?"

"I'm gonna take you to see your sister," he says quickly in one breath, hoping he wasn't offering the wrong thing or that she'd turn down seeing her closest family because maybe nine hours in a car with him each direction would be her worst nightmare.

"What?" she squeaks out in a voice much higher than her usual tone. Out of all the things she thought he may say, that wasn't one of them.

"If you want, I mean," he adds and then realizes she's probably looking for more of an explanation of how it's feasible. He stumbles through explaining, "The thing with not being able to go was that you'd either have to not sleep at all or sleep most of the time you're there, right? So I could drive you there tonight and you could sleep, then you could hang out with your sister all day tomorrow, and then I could drive you back tomorrow night, get you here in time for work."

"You'd do that?" her slight inflection at the end makes it come across like a question, but in her head it was more like a declaration. She knew he'd do something like this for her, something this big. But she didn't expect him to show up on her doorstep on Christmas Eve and give her the thing she wanted second most in this world at the moment (second to clarity, to knowing what the right thing would be). Hence her surprise and the inflection making her statement a question.

"Yeah, of course," he glances at his feet sounding guilty as he continues, "I'm a really big part of why the rest of your family isn't here to spend Christmas with you. The least I could do is take you to the family that wants to be with you." He doesn't want her to argue with that. He knows he owes her even if she argues with that logic sometimes saying her family is her fault. So, in order to avoid that road this time, he continues quickly with one of his concerns, "Your sister's not going to beat me up though right? Not that it's a deal breaker. I'm down for doing this no matter what. I'd just appreciate a little heads up."

She laughs a little and answers, "No. Jessica wouldn't…actually yeah, maybe she would. But, well, I don't think I've ever seen her be physically violent. If she wants to hurt someone she usually goes for a verbal assault."

"Awesome. I can tune her out easy," Puck says finding a simple solution to a situation he was dreading. He's not sure what they're doing though. She hasn't objected to going, but she also hasn't exactly taken him up on his offer. So, needing clarification, he asks, "So do you want to go?"

"Yes," she responds immediately. What he was doing was probably too generous and she probably shouldn't let him stay up two nights in a row to drive her to see her sister who probably won't be nice to him (and she probably shouldn't be spending so much time with him when he seems to constantly have her thinking about her "romantic life on hold" decision). But she's not passing the chance to see her sister for anything. She set out to find other people to substitute for her family as much as other people could and she's accomplished that. But she still needs her sister so much that at just the idea that she's going to see her in a dozen or so hours makes the smile stay stuck on her face.

"Okay, good. Go grab whatever you need, I'll be in my truck," Puck says, glad that she's taking him up on his Christmas present.

"No," she responds, making him worry. She's thinking everything out quickly and she realized that jumping in his truck is not the best decision. She explains as thoughts occur to her, "I need to change and pack a few things and I need to call Rachel to let her know I won't be over tomorrow and Artie's family to tell them I won't be coming to church. And maybe I should just tell them in person on the way out of town, drop off the cookies I was going to make for them. And I should probably bake the rest of the dough to bring with us- I don't want to show up empty handed, I already mailed my gifts to them. And we shouldn't take your truck. My car gets better gas mileage so the trip will be cheaper in my car. Plus my car would be more comfortable to sleep in." She pauses and Puck thinks she might be done, but she's just taking a breath before she continues, "Did you pack anything? Because you can't just stay in the car or drop me off, you have to come in and meet my sister and a t-shirt with the silhouette of a naked woman isn't…you can't wear that. We'll have to stop by your house too. I need to print you a map to Reading too. And-"

Puck places his hands on Quinn's shoulders, looks her firmly in the eyes, and tells her, "Chill." Once she's stopped talking, he tries to address all of her frantic rambling (which he hopes is out of excitement), "First, take it easy before you have a heart attack or something. Second, I already have a change of clothes. My mom picked out a shirt, ironed it, and hung it in my truck. I already have a map to get to Reading so as long as you know where to go once we're there we'll be fine. I don't care if we take your car, that's probably a good idea. I got off work at noon and I slept from then until about an hour and a half ago so I'm good to drive all night- don't worry about that either. I'm completely ready to go so all we have to do is get you ready. So tell me what to do to get the cookies done for you while you go pack."

Quinn's not sure why she started freaking out. She supposed she was just excited and a bit nervous that they could actually pull this off. She wishes he had told her about doing this sooner so that she could plan better, though she does like that he surprised her. She lets his words sink in, takes a deep breath, and asks, "Are you sure you can handle baking cookies?"

"No," he answers honestly, "there's a really good chance they'll turn out bad. But I'll give it a try so you can get ready and we can get on the road to see your sister sooner."

In moments like this she finds it impossible to remember anything bad that's happened between them. It's even difficult to remember what they're facing with the fact that she's pregnant. Instead, she's just a girl and he's just the guy that makes her smile, makes her heart race, and makes her feel safe (loved).

So she smiles at him and hugs him for much longer than four Mississippi's and says grateful for everything he's trying so hard to be for her, "Thank you."

He sighs a little into her hair, holds her a little tighter, and waits to respond. He doesn't want to mess this up by saying anything right now. For right now, he just wants to revel in the fact that he gets to hold her.

But then she lets go and he does too and some kind of response is needed as well as something to let this moment go (because if they don't, it could just get ruined). So he finally says, "You may want to wait and see how it goes before you say that. Plus, you are going to owe me a gift now."

"I probably shouldn't even bother trying to top yours," she says as she turns around and heads for the kitchen.

"I could think of a few things," he mutters as he follows.

"What?" she asks, not having caught whatever he said as they made their way into the kitchen.

"Nothing," he says because if she knew what he said, she could probably guess that most of the things he was thinking that could top his gift to her involved sex. To distract her from possibly getting suspicious about what he said, he comments, "This is a huge ass kitchen. I think it's bigger than our family room and kitchen combined."

"Has to fit a staff for when they have dinner parties," Quinn supplies as she takes the cookie dough out of the fridge and gathers the other things Puck will need (a rolling pin, cookie cutters, baking sheets, etc.). She explains everything to him, even writes out directions about how many cookies to place on each cookie sheet, when to take them out, what "over-sprinkling" the cookies with sprinkles would look like. Once she thinks she's told him everything he should need to know, Quinn heads up stairs to try and decide what she should wear and what she should bring with her.

Twenty minutes later, by which time Quinn has tried on ten different outfits but managed to settle on two (she figured on changing somewhere before she shows up at her sister's and also changing to join Jessica and Eric with his family- as she expects that will be something they'll have to do), Quinn has just finished putting on some comfy knit pants and a warm sweater (both part of the gifts from her mother) when Puck comes striding into her room with a baking sheet in his hands.

"Is this what they're supposed to look like?" he asks. She said that they should be "slightly golden," but he didn't know what qualified as "slightly" or what gold looked like on a cookie. He figured he should make sure he's doing okay before he forges on with the next batch.

Quinn comes over to look at them. They were a little more than slightly golden, but they weren't bad. "They're fine," she tells him as she goes back to hastily putting other things together that she might want to bring (slippers are going in her purse), "but maybe next time take them out about a minute or two sooner."

"Okay," he says and then he realizes where he is. He looks around examining the room, opens his mouth to say something, but shuts it. Instead he says the thought he's having, which he didn't mean to voice out loud, "I probably shouldn't say anything about being in your bedroom, huh?"

"Probably not," she agrees, "especially if you were going to say something about wishing we had spent time in here."

That was one of his many thoughts exactly. "Well, it is better than my room," he defends.

"Except if you were caught here, my dad owns two guns that I know of. He's a big fan of the second amendment," Quinn informs him. Not that that was the only reason he couldn't ever come here while they were…whatever they were. But there was a pretty good chance they'd get caught because her parents had been home more at the time and getting caught would have been very bad for both of them. (She wonders briefly what her father would do if Puck showed up there now. They had an arrangement and she had been disowned, so would he bother to try and whip out one of his guns even if it was just to intimidate Puck or make him get off his property? She's pretty sure he doesn't care enough to do anything like that anymore. And maybe he never did, not for the right reasons at least.)

"A jackass who owns guns, there's a good combination," Puck comments, mostly to himself.

"Yeah," Quinn agrees distractedly. She shakes herself out of her thoughts and tells him, "You should start another batch. I think I'm almost done getting ready."

He does just that and gets four more batches done, finishing off all the dough she made, before she's finally ready to go.

Though in her defense talking to Rachel did take a while as Rachel wouldn't let her back out of coming without knowing exactly what she was doing instead. And then she had to question, "Puck's taking you all the way to your sister's for a few hours and then taking you all the way back?" and somehow saying yes was what finally ended the call. Quinn finds out why a few minutes later as she's getting her small bag, clothes hanging up, pillow, and purse together and her phone goes off with text messages from some members of glee club (Tina, Mercedes, Kurt) telling her to have a good Christmas with her sister. She doesn't mention it to Puck.

After stopping by Artie's and dropping off a plate of cookies with her apology for canceling on them so late, Puck and Quinn are finally on the road and heading toward Reading at eleven thirty.

Realizing that this means that they'd probably get there around nine in the morning, which may be a little early for her sister. Especially given what Quinn knew Jessica wanted to be doing with her husband around Christmas Eve night/Christmas morning- Quinn didn't want the specifics, as far as she was concerned, she knew too much. Perhaps she'll have to tell Puck to pull over somewhere and they'll just have to wait a bit before knocking on Jess's door. Puck will probably be so tired by then that he'd appreciate the chance to sleep a bit.

"You should probably try to get so sleep," Puck says, startling Quinn out of her thoughts. She had just been sitting there and he thought he had been clear about his plan- he drove, she slept. She needed to sleep- for herself and for the baby- so he figured he'd just remind her of that.

"Right," she says. She should probably stop worrying about how all of this is going to work out and try and get some sleep so it actually has a chance to. (And she's grateful he reminded her of what she should be doing.) She reclines her seat, tries in vain to get comfortable, and tries to trust that everything will work out just fine so she can fall asleep.

Somewhere within the first hour Quinn does actually fall asleep, which Puck is glad for. If she didn't get any sleep on the whole trip, his idea would basically be a bust. And it's then that he notices how quiet it is. Not only is Quinn's car nearly silent (which is a strange contrast to his rumbling truck), but the roads are pretty empty and quiet too. The silence gets to him and he knows it's against the law (unless his mom was lying about that), but he puts one of his earphones in and his MP3 on a long Metallica playlist to help him stay awake.

Things get kind of hairy on the drive just after Puck makes it through Pittsburg. There are a lot of ramps to take and he gets confused and has to backtrack a bit, but they had been making really good time given the complete absence of traffic.

Around five Quinn wakes up and figures she's a bit early in doing so since it's still dark out. Puck doesn't notice, he's humming softly and she finds herself drifting back to sleep quickly.

Just before seven Quinn wakes up with a start as she noticed that the car wasn't moving.

"Morning," Puck greets beside her, startling her even more. By way of explanation for why they're parked in front of a convenience store he says, "I don't know about you, but I'm starving. I'm going to grab some stuff. You want anything?" He's glad she woke up when she did. He thought he'd either have to leave her there and try to decide on something to get her or wake her (an idea he really didn't like).

She runs her hands through her hair, wipes the sleep out of her eyes, and tells him, "I'll just go with you." (She really had to pee. The baby was definitely starting to affect her bladder the last couple of weeks, she so hadn't been looking forward to that part of being pregnant.) She doesn't notice until she's inside the AMPM that she's still wearing her slippers.

With purchases made and a stop by the restroom by both of them, they get back in the car and stay parked for a minute.

"We're making really good time. I think we'll be there in like an hour," Puck tells Quinn as he opens his package of beef jerky.

Quinn wrinkles her nose as she sips her orange juice. Beef jerky at seven in the morning? Ew. It almost makes her not want to eat her granola bar. But apparently the baby is hungry and totally not turned off by Puck's eating habits (even if he is washing down the beef jerky with a coke and Doritos).

"I'll drive the rest of the way," Quinn tells him.

"No, you should go back to sleep," he rejects immediately.

"You've been up all night and you need to sleep too," she points out, "Plus at this point I'm probably not going to fall asleep for the last hour or so we'll be on the road and we can't go knocking on their door quite this early anyway. So trade me places, I'll drive."

"I think you're forgetting that I'm already in the driver's seat," he says with a confident smirk. He drove, _she _slept. He didn't get why that was suddenly such a difficult plan to follow.

She rolls her eyes. She's just trying to do the smart thing here. He stayed up all night, he should get some sleep. Why were they arguing over this? She returns, "Trade me places or…I'm calling your mother. I'm sure she'd hate to be woken up this early and hear that you're refusing to do the smartest thing and get some sleep after you've been driving for nearly seven and a half hours."

His mom would probably give him grief and Quinn did have that evil side (that he liked and found very arousing) so she'd definitely come through on her threat. Instead of responding and continuing to try and have his way, Puck gets out of the car as per her wishes and trades her places.

An hour later, Puck is getting really agitated. He reclined the seat, even made an attempt to fall asleep, and then pretended to be asleep- he didn't want Quinn to worry about him not sleeping (which is how he had decided to think about why Quinn was so insistent about trading places). But now, even though he's trying to pretend to be asleep, he can tell that they're going in circles.

So he sits up, fakes a yawn, and asks after looking around the residential neighborhood, "Are we almost there?" He knows the answer, but he was supposed to be sleeping so he was trying to put on a show.

"I don't know," Quinn responds honestly, "I've actually only been to Jessica's house four times. Her and Eric would usually come visit us because I'm in school most of the year and don't have the time for such a long trip. And my parents aren't crazy about this town or Eric's family being close." She stops at an intersection and guesses that she should turn left (she's only going left because she already tried going right). She could have used the navigation system, but it talked and Puck was supposed to be sleeping (or at least she hoped that while he was pretending he would actually fall asleep). She adds, "I know you weren't sleeping."

"I tried," he swears. He offers, "I've had long nights before though and it's always been pretty typical for me that I don't get a ton of sleep most of the time."

She knew that. She knew that he's either had responsibilities that fell to him because of his family situation or he's tried too hard to be the reckless teenager he's never really gotten to live as. But this is a little different. Tonight he's supposed to drive her back to Lima so she can make it to work on time tomorrow and keep her job for the last week she actually has one. And she trusts that he wants to come through for her on that. So much so that he's going to get behind the wheel and tell her he's fine to drive no matter what. But if he doesn't sleep at all between now and then he'll have been up for over twenty-four hours and by getting behind the wheel again he wouldn't only be putting himself and her in danger, but the baby too. Maybe this wasn't the best idea. "Promise me you'll sleep before we get back on the road though," she pleas, concerned about all of them.

"I promise," he tells her, meaning it (he didn't want to risk falling asleep at the wheel either), "even if I have to sleep through meeting your sister."

"You're going to have to fit in sleeping around that," she tells him as she pulls over. She puts the car in park, sighs, looks over at him and tells him, "We're here." She points to a condo down the road and tells him, "Actually it's there, but I didn't want to park there yet because I don't think we should go knocking on their door until after ten. Jessica's never been a morning person. I think it's a little too early for her."

It was only eight fifteen so they had a bit of a wait. They would have gotten there much closer to ten if they hadn't made such good time, but there wasn't exactly any traffic in very early morning hours of Christmas.

Quinn reclines her seat and unbuckles her seat belt as she tells him, "I'm going to try and get a little more sleep. You should try to sleep too." She knew she wasn't really leaving him much of a choice in the matter since she was still in the driver's seat so his options were either sit there, try to sleep, or go out into the snowy, cold morning.

He reclines his seat figuring he might as well try to sleep again, he had time to kill after all. It isn't until his seat's reclined that he notices that Quinn has settled into her seat by curling up on it on her side, facing him. And she's only about a foot away from him because this car isn't exactly spacious. It kind of reminds him of that one night they had together.

The last thing he remembers before finally falling asleep is staring in her eyes (and her staring right back in his).

-o-o-o-

Puck wakes up to Quinn calling his name and shaking his shoulder. He's a bit disoriented when he wakes up because not only do they not seem to be parked on her sister's street anymore, but Quinn has changed (and put on a little make up or something too- he's not sure but she definitely seems…cleaned up). He sits up and brings the seat with him to notice that they're parked in front of a Jack in the Box.

"Sorry, but it's nine fifty-five and we're about six minutes away from Jess's house- I had trouble finding somewhere to stop to change. So take your shirt and change so we can head back already," she hands him his shirt from where she had hung it in the back of her car. She felt bad about waking him when he hadn't probably gotten much more than an hour of sleep, but she wanted to spend as much time as she could with her sister and chances were good that Jessica was up now.

Puck took the shirt and headed in. He could have changed in the car. He was fine with that. But since he was being sent inside the Jack in the Box to use their bathroom to change, he figured Quinn wasn't okay with that. Maybe she would find him too tempting shirtless and in such close proximity in her car. Or at least that was what he decided to hope was true. (Honestly, Quinn had been too anxious to even notice that changing in the car was an option for him.)

When Puck gets back in the car, changed into a dark green button up shirt, he notices that Quinn is checking her phone and says, "Let me guess, you've got a message from Rachel telling you to have a good Christmas and to practice with me on our "road trip."

"You too?" she asks needlessly, "What does she mean by practice? We haven't decided on any songs for regional's."

"That's exactly what I was thinking. So when she sent it around twelve thirty last night I texted her back and asked her. She said to practice everything we've done and while we're at it we should try to come up with new stuff to contribute, suggestions- since we'd be spending so much time together with a stereo to make song selections. You know sometimes I think that chick's seriously batty," he tells her as she starts driving them back to her sister's.

She rolls up to a stoplight and looks over at him, glaring.

Oh, maybe that last comment should have been kept to himself. He wonders if it's the "chick" part or the "batty" part that she's going to have a problem with.

"You texted while you were driving last night?" she questions, clearly applaud at the idea.

"Yeah, but don't worry about it. I can totally text and drive at the same time," he tells her. And noticing that she still seems mad (okay maybe it was kind of an unnecessary risk), he adds, "And I won't do it again. Promise."

"Ever," she clarifies, "not just tonight. Don't you know how many people get in accidents from texting while driving? They have commercials about it and it always seems to be on the news- reports of someone getting killed because they were texting while they were driving."

"Okay, okay. I won't do it again," he promises and tries to hide his smile (she cares about whether he gets himself hurt or not!).

She pulls over and turns off the engine. She takes a deep breath, releases it. She turns to him, a bit frantic, and tells him, "You know you don't have to come in if you really don't want to. I can lie and say someone else drove me here and you can take the car and pick me up later. You've already done so much just by driving me here, you shouldn't have to come in if you don't want to."

"Nah, I'll go meet your sister," he tells her, "I mean you got to hear a bunch of embarrassing stories about me from my childhood from my mom, it's only fair that I get to try and get some out of your sister about you." He smirks and tries to make light of what they're doing. But really, even though he's nervous as hell and more than a little scared, he wants to meet her family because he's still hoping that their lives being intertwined won't end any time soon (or ever), so he should start getting to know her family now. Step up and be the man who does the right thing at every crossroads like he's been trying to be.

"Good luck with that," she tells him, knowing her sister probably won't cave and actually tell him anything. And also very glad he's going to be coming. She was nervous about him meeting her sister (mostly because Jessica would probably have something to say about this whole thing- what he's doing for her here and everything- but she also just doesn't want him to not be with her all day.

They get out of the car and Quinn grabs the cookies from the back seat. They're going to have to go back out to get their stuff, but for some reason she can't go in with just her purse (she needs something in her hands to keep them from fidgeting).

"Your sister has a really badly broken leg, right?" Puck asks eyeing the two-story condo that they were currently climbing about a dozen steps to get to its front porch.

"Yeah, not the best place to live for her at the moment probably," Quinn comments, agreeing with him.

Quinn eagerly rings the doorbell the second they make their way up the last step, while Puck lingers at the edge of the step hiding ever so slightly behind Quinn.

As Quinn expected, it's Eric who answers the door after a minute. He seems stunned at first, face blank, but after a couple of seconds his eyes go wide, he smiles, and says, "Holy shit! This…oh, this…"

"Who is it?" Jessica calls. She was on the couch in their living room, which blended with their entryway, but from her position on the couch (the door was behind her) she couldn't see who would be ringing their doorbell this early Christmas morning and she couldn't exactly maneuver much either given the weight of her cast.

Eric looks around (back at his wife), and whispers to Quinn and Puck, "Be very quiet."

Jessica turns back to the TV letting it capture her attention since her husband wasn't answering. She assumes it must have been some neighbor who got him to go outside for some reason or another- probably that their Christmas decorations had been tampered with, it had been happening a lot in their neighborhood this year.

Eric, meanwhile, leads Quinn and Puck in, tiptoeing around to the end of the couch hoping Jessica won't notice what's up until he gets Quinn in her line of vision. (He didn't want to startle her. Getting her excited hadn't worked out so well on the couple of times he's tried it since she broke her leg. She had a tendency to get so excited she forgot her leg was broken on those occasions and of course that didn't turn out well.)

Once Quinn reaches the end of the couch, Eric pushing her around it to position her according to the idea in his head, Quinn greets simply, "Hi."

Jessica turns slowly at the sound of the familiar (though her ears could be playing tricks on her) and distinctly female voice. As soon as she sees that her ears hadn't been playing tricks on her she screams loudly in excitement. And, as Eric predicted, tries to get up off the couch like she didn't have a huge cast on the entirety of her left leg weighing her down.

Given how close Quinn was when her sister began struggling to get up, Quinn rushes to her in the span of a second and hugs her while keeping her in her place on the couch so she won't get up and hurt herself worse trying to get to her. Quinn immediately gets teary as soon as Jessica hugs her back and since she can hear that Jessica has done the same she doesn't bother trying to tell herself it's just hormones.

"Oh my God," Jessica exclaims, "I can't believe you're here." She pulls back, somewhat alarmed, "Wait, you're not supposed to be able to come though. You didn't quit your job early or anything right? Because I know how much you need the money and as happy I am to see you not working to be here wouldn't be a good thing."

Quinn wipes at her eyes and responds, "No. I'm not missing work. I'll have to leave pretty early tonight to make it back for work tomorrow morning though." She smiles because she knows her sister is going to like this part and says with a nod in Puck's direction who Jessica hadn't noticed yet, "Actually, coming was Puck's Christmas gift. He drove us all the way here and he's driving me back so I won't miss any work or sleep."

A slow smile spreads over Jessica's face as she turns slightly to see the other visitor that they apparently have. He seems taller than she thought he'd be. Though maybe the fact that he's standing and she's on the couch has something to do with this. She turns back to Quinn and mouths, "Hot."

As Quinn's eyes light up in slight alarm (he was in the room- this was no time for Jess's teasing talk like that), her sister says, "Well Puck, come over and sit please. It's going to hurt my neck to if you stay back there and I don't think you want to make me getting to know you painful, right?"

"Uh, no," he stumbles because that kind of sounded like a trick question. And is he paranoid or did her words have deeper meaning? He thinks there's something else she was trying to say, but he's not used to mind games exactly so he's not sure. Regardless, he does as she instructed and takes a seat on the couch that was kitty-corner to the one Jessica was spread out on with Quinn next to her.

As Eric searches around for the remote (they had company, should probably turn off the TV), Jessica begins, "So_ Puck_, I though you were Jewish? What's up with giving Quinn a Christmas gift?" By what she had learned about Puck through Quinn, Jessica wasn't surprised that Puck would do something like this for Quinn. She was pretty sure that he cared about her sister a whole lot (whether or not Quinn was ready to recognize that or the fact that she reciprocated his feelings) so even though he got her little sister pregnant and had broken her heart, for all the things he had done lately (which she believed to be more than all of the things she was hearing about), Jessica decided that she likes Puck. But she wasn't going to let him know what she thought about him until screwing with his head about how she thought of him wasn't fun anymore.

"I'm Jewish, so Christmas isn't really my thing, but Quinn…all of you guys celebrate Christmas," Puck shrugs and continues, not really sure what to say, "I just thought she should get to celebrate it with family."

Okay, Jessica thinks, she's so right on in thinking that Puck has some serious feelings for her sister. She had been pretty confident in assuming that based on things she'd managed to get Quinn to tell her, but now she was already feeling pretty positive in that thought. She smirks and says, "Good answer, I agree. Quinn and I should get to spend this Christmas together." She adds to Eric who just took as seat on the couch next to Puck having finally found the remote and turned off the TV, "Why didn't you drive me to my sister?"

"Because then we'd have to see your parents," Eric responds easily (though honestly, he totally blanked on getting that idea).

"Oh, right. Good point," Jessica agrees.

"You didn't tell them?" Puck questions Quinn without a thought. Considering that she didn't tell them, maybe there was some really good reason she didn't want them to know, but Puck didn't think of that before speaking.

"Tell us what?" Jessica pounces.

Reluctantly, Quinn admits, "Mom and dad left for Aspen yesterday."

"What! Why didn't you tell me?" Jessica asks.

"Because then you would have rented a bigger car so you two could drive all the way to Lima and I know you shouldn't be spending that kind of money right now and that nine hours in a mini-van or something else that would accommodate you couldn't possibly be comfortable. And you already made plans for Christmas with Eric's family and I didn't want you canceling them to come spend the holiday alone with me when I wouldn't even be able to spend much time with you because I have to work majority of the time that they'll be gone," Quinn answers easily. She had thought this over many times and she didn't want her injured sister traveling so far to spend one day and a few hours on Christmas Eve and the days after Christmas with her. It wasn't worth all the trouble it could cause.

"Of course I would have come, you're my sister. And it wasn't your call to make that decision. You should have told me," Jessica insists. "We should have just come to you anyway. I don't know why we didn't even attempt to," Jessica says, mostly wondering to herself and her husband about the issue.

"Because going to Lima usually means seeing your parents and that never makes for a very Merry Christmas," Eric answers because he certainly knew why he avoided any situation involving Jessica's parents. (What disturbed him most of all about them was that Russell seemed to like him. God he hoped that guy was totally lying every time he was halfway decent to him.)

"That's not true," Jessica denies, "It's just a different type of merry. With other people like your family Christmas is merry out of genuine enjoyment and happiness. With my parents its merry because we drink." She amends, "Well, most of us drink. Everyone except Quinn."

"Well she is under aged," Eric offers.

"Like that matters after my parents have polished off five bottles of wine- each. Quinn just doesn't like alcohol. Which is fine, and probably a plus right now. She can't miss it," Jessica says, finding the upside of Quinn's habits despite the fact that she figures holidays must have been really rough completely sober. It's been at least a decade since she spent any time at all with her parents without being at least slightly buzzed within the first hour and a half of contact.

"She likes wine coolers," Puck says because he thought it was true. He kind of feels like in saying it he's defending her, but he's not sure why because, replaying their words, they didn't seem to be criticizing at all, just stating a fact.

"I don't_ like_ wine coolers," Quinn corrects, "I just…I've had a couple and the taste didn't make me gag."

"You actually finished a drink?" Jessica asks Quinn, though she can already tell what the answers going to be. She shoots a look to Puck and questions, "Is this your doing too?"

"Yes," he answers honestly. It was totally his idea for her to pretend to drink and then it was his doing that she actually drank one because he sent her a wine cooler via Finn and finally he was the one who had them that night.

Quinn opens her mouth to argue and gets out half a sound of a letter before snapping her mouth shut. She changes her mind and says, "Yeah, that was kind of your doing." She says it lightly, just ribbing him a bit because she really wouldn't have thought of pretending to drink a wine cooler to blend in better and she wouldn't have drank that one Finn gave her if it hadn't actually been from Puck. They both knew all that, just like they both had some responsibility in everything they go into.

"And everything else," he says solemnly though, despite the fact that they had actually talked about this. He couldn't help feeling responsible for the way things were.

"Stop that," she whispers. She doesn't want to go down this road again where they talk about how they got here without really talking about how they got here. Or where he just blames himself endlessly and closes himself off a little.

The tension that suddenly sprang up in the room is painfully obvious. Further demonstrated by how both teens have their eyes turned toward the floor.

Jessica, in attempt to break this pretty bleak and awfully awkward place they've gotten, randomly blurts out, "I haven't opened your gift yet. Now I can do it with you here. Eric go get the gifts." Hopefully, she asks, "Did you bring mine too so we could open them together?"

"It's in the car," Quinn supplies.

"I'll get it for you," Puck immediately volunteers. He could use some air, if only for a second.

Quinn gets up, saying, "I'll go too. I have other stuff."

"I can get everything," Puck tells her. There was no reason they should both have to go out to the snow.

She sits back down as she responds, "If you're sure… thanks."

As soon as Puck is out the door, Jessica swats Quinn on the arm (prompting an "ow").

"What was that for?" Quinn's quick to ask.

"Because I'm guessing by the massive amounts of tension and quiet frustration both of you are demonstrating, you haven't _rewarded_ Puck for his _very_ good behavior," Jessica guesses.

Brows furrowed, Quinn comments, "Somehow that's nowhere close to anything I imagined you'd say to me the first time we got to see each other after so many months as soon as we were alone together."

"Really? Even though I frequently bring this very topic up during our phone calls and video chats?" Jessica asks because she actually thought it was really predictable of her.

"Considering I usually tune you out. Nope," Quinn responds.

"Well listen this time," Jessica warns, pressing on quickly before they were re-joined by either man, "I married the greatest guy I've ever met and even he didn't think of doing for me what Puck did for you. So maybe it's about time you stop denying to yourself what his actions mean and what they could mean for your future. He's waited long enough to discuss what role he _could_ play in your life, so at the very least at least talk to him about what role he _has_ played. You shut him down pretty quickly there when your history came up and all he was doing was admitting that he knows he screwed up."

"I wasn't shutting him down. It's just that we have talked about it many times that both of us were responsible for me getting pregnant. It wasn't just my fault or just his fault as he seems to think sometimes and I just didn't want him to take on the burden of guilt for it here, now, again when he should know by now that it's not right," Quinn explains.

"How did you not get it?" Jessica questions her sister, to Quinn's great confusion. "He wasn't just talking about the pregnancy. He was talking about _everything_. Everything before it, everything after it," Jessica tells her sister hoping that her certainty is coming through. She may have just met Puck and reading people easily has never really been her thing, but she was sure she was right that the young man who was just sitting on her couch held himself responsible for a helluva lot more than just the unplanned pregnancy.

Quinn seems to be mulling this over (she wasn't sure what to make of it, what to think of it, and wasn't sure she was ready to do either), Jessica adds, "I know you're not thinking about the future for this month and fine, keep going with that, but when it ends in a few days, you need to talk to him about responsibility for everything else besides the baby. It's clear that he's feeling a lot of guilt and I don't want you to have to find out what will happen if that guilt gets to fester."

The front door clamors open preventing Quinn from responding even if she had known what to say. She had always thought that the guilt Puck seemed to feel was just over the fact that their one night together got her pregnant. She's not sure why she had always assumed that. She supposes because on the very rare occasions they talked about their past, that was one thing he outright admitted to feeling responsible for. What if her sister was right though? What if he's been feeling guilty for _everything_? What is she supposed to do about that?

"I think I got everything," Puck says, dropping most of it by the door (which he hopes is out of the way) and bringing what was obviously the gift Quinn brought with her back to the couch. It was a pretty sizable and heavy box, he was getting really curious about what was in it.

Eric comes stomping down the hallway as Puck hands the gift over to Quinn (not quite willing to let go because it was heavy and she was…a girl).

"Whoo," Eric breaths out, seeming relieved to be done with his task. He drops off a gift at the place he had been sitting, then hands one over to his wife, and then hands one to Puck, who takes it uncertainly.

As Eric sits back down on the couch next to Puck he mouths to his wife, "Right?" with a gesture to Puck. He was pretty sure that when Jessica mentioned getting the gifts, she had given him a look that he thought meant, "Grab something for Puck so he's not left out and because he just drove my sister all the way here."

Jessica gives her husband a small nod (sometimes she thought it was ridiculously awesome that he could- occasionally- read her so well). "Okay, I can't wait any longer," Jessica declares and tears into her gift. Which is quickly followed by a shriek and an excited, "You got me the Jack Lulanne Juicer!"

"Well I know how you like juice and how you've been watching a lot of infomercials in your practically bedridden state so I figured you may want one," Quinn offered, smiling because Jessica was.

"Of course I wanted one! Not quite as much as I want the Showtime Rotisserie, but more than I want the Magic Chop and the t-shirt maker thing," Jessica tells her sister excitedly.

"I'm next!" Eric declares with excitement ripping the wrapping paper from his gift. He laughs as he realizes what he's gotten. "Big Buck Hunter Pro! That's awesome. Thank you Quinn," Eric says gratefully, genuinely pleased with his gift (although Jess was probably going to complain about how often he'll be playing this just like she did when he "had" a PS3, but oh well).

With Eric and Jessica both done, only Puck and Quinn have gifts left to open. Puck sat and waited for Quinn to go, but she wasn't quite ready to find out what her sister and Eric had gotten her. She knows that whatever it is, is probably going to make her emotional again and she wants to delay crying just a little bit longer if she can. So, since Puck appears to be waiting for her, she tells him, "I want to go last."

He thought it was like the gentlemanly thing to do or whatever, to let her go first, but if she wants him to open whatever they scrounged up at the last minute to give him (which was really nice of them, he knew), fine. So Puck unwraps his gift and opens the lid of the plain box and pulls out a drinking helmet. "Thank you," he says, though he's not sure if he's supposed to take this as a genuine gift or a joke.

Jessica wads up her wrapping paper and throws it at her husband (and hits him in the face). "You decided to give him a gift that involves alcohol? He's only…seventeen?"

Both Quinn and Puck nod, confirming that she's right about his age though this goes unnoticed to the married couple.

"He can put other beverages in it," Eric defends, "It's a really fun helmet. I'm only giving this one away because Joel got it for me a while ago and I already had one."

"Thanks for pointing out that we're re-gifting," Jessica responds sarcastically.

"There's no way we could have had a gift ready for him, we just met him like ten minutes ago and we had no idea he was coming. So I think he knew it was going to be a re-gift considering he _surprised_ us," Eric argues.

"That is true," Quinn agrees interrupting, "Plus it's not like you put beer in it."

"You're taking his side?" Jessica demands of her sister.

Why did she open her mouth? (Is there any way she can blame sporadic moments of word vomit on being pregnant?) Quinn tries to come up with something impartial sounding and offers, "I don't think it was a very good gift, but I don't think there was anything technically wrong with it given…everything Eric pointed out."

Jessica balks at her sister. True, Quinn was just being rational, but shouldn't the bonds of sisterhood extend beyond rationality?

"I'm on your side," Puck offers to Jessica.

"Really? Why?" Jessica asks because she knows she's kind of nit picking. But come on, it was just an awful idea to give a minor, one her sister is having a kid with no less, a beer helmet. What was Eric thinking?

" 'Cause you're Quinn's sister and I'm the guy that got her pregnant and I figure agreeing with you might get me on your good side so you don't end up punching me in the balls," Puck answers, completely serious.

A beat of silence passes before Jessica and Eric both burst out laughing and Quinn and Puck quickly join in.

After several minutes Jessica calms down enough to say through laughs, "That's not an awful idea. In fact, I think I do like you more."

"Eh, I think I would have liked him more if I got to see him get punched in the nads," Eric offers jokingly (sort of- guys getting hit in the balls was always funny, YouTube and _America's Funniest Home Videos_ were proof of that).

"I knew I should have worn a cup," Puck jokes.

"Alright, enough," Jessica interrupts, as much fun as this was turning into, they weren't exactly done yet and they had things to do today. She tells Quinn, "If you don't open that gift now I'm going to tear into it. I can't wait any longer."

Quinn begins ripping the paper from the large brown cardboard box. As soon as it's all off and Eric is handing her scissors to cut through the tape holding it together, Jessica warns hastily, "Oh, watch out, it might pop out at you. I meant to call and tell you that."

Okay, now she's a little afraid. And a little peeved- apparently if she hadn't shown up here today she wouldn't have gotten that warning because Jess forgot. Quinn finishes cutting the tape and recoils as she opens the flaps of the box, just in case anything did indeed spring out. Once she opens her eyes again she sees a pillow slowly coming out of the box just a tad. She pulls it out and questions, "You shoved a whole body pillow into a square box?"

"Well I wasn't going to pay for a bigger box. It's just a pillow, it could be smashed in there and still be perfectly normal," Jessica reasons. She adds, knowing it wasn't the most obvious of gifts, "And just about every pregnancy site I went on said that a body pillow can be really helpful for a comfortable good nights sleep as you get later into your second trimester and definitely in your third."

"I've read that too. Thank you," Quinn says gratefully.

"There's more in there," Jessica tells her just to make sure she finds everything. Pillow last didn't seem like the best order, but pillow first hadn't worked out while she was packing it. It wasn't safe for one of the other items.

There's a cute scarf and hat and a pair of gloves as well as a really comfy looking pair of slippers. What she finds last really surprises Quinn. "A camera?" she questions because first, she was sure they shouldn't be spending all this money on her and second, as far as they knew she had one.

"Well you need one right? Since you sold yours on craigslist?" Jessica asks knowingly. She smiles at Quinn's dumbfounded expression and explains, "Ever since you said about selling some stuff from your room that you don't need on there, I've been keeping an eye on all sections of the Lima craigslist. Not only was there a camera on there a while ago that looked exactly like yours, but the ad sounded like you. What was up with only asking fifty dollars for it though? Do you know how much…actually your camera wasn't that expensive. Dad's newest secretary is a horrible shopper. But still, you could have gotten more if you had just asked for more."

"I just wanted it to sell," Quinn reasons.

And Jessica knows that Quinn could get more for the camera they just gave her, especially since it's brand new. But out of all the things she had gotten rid of (most of which was actually religious paraphernalia that were gifts from their parents), that was one thing she believed Quinn should keep. Knowing what was probably going through her sister's head (this wasn't a necessity, the money from it was more important), she tells her, "No matter what, pictures and a camera to take them with seem like they'll be really important at this point in your life." She knew Quinn wasn't thinking about the future right now, a wish she had already broken in their short time together, so she didn't want to elaborate and just hoped Quinn understood her point.

Quinn did. She hadn't thought of it before, but Jessica did have an important point. If she keeps the baby then she'll want to be able to show her pictures of her pregnancy and everything after. And if she doesn't keep the baby then pictures of this time will be all she has left. "Thank you," she says to her sister, immensely grateful that she had thought of what she had missed.

With the gifts all opened (Jessica had been impatient and made Eric exchange their gifts for each other the previous night), Jessica asks if they're hungry and Eric gets a box of donuts and danish from the kitchen.

As they eat, Jessica mentions, "So you two don't have to head back until tonight, right? So you can come to Eric's parents' house with us."

"Sure," Quinn accepts, "if that's going to be okay with your parents," she adds to Eric because she knew her sister wanted her to come so they could spend more time together, but that didn't mean extra people were welcome.

"Oh yeah, it'll be fine," Eric assures, "We've got a smaller crowd this year anyway. My sister and all of her kids are at her husband's family and though my aunt and uncle are coming as usual, none of their kids are."

"What about your brother? Did he ever call you back?" Jessica asks, just remembering that her husband had mentioned this days ago.

"Yeah he's coming- alone," Eric responds.

"He and Amy-"

"Yep," Eric confirms before Jessica can even finish asking. He adds to the other two people who probably have no idea what they're talking about, "My brother Austin broke up with his girlfriend about a week or two ago. They had been together for like five years so it'd probably be a good idea to avoid the name 'Amy' around him and probably don't talk to him about dating or relationships or anything like that."

"Why'd they break up?" Jessica's quick to ask.

Eric simply shrugs as he answers, "I don't know. He wouldn't say." Seeing the look on Jessica's face, Eric warns, "And you are not going to try and get it out of him tonight. It's Christmas, they just broke up, give the guy a break."

"What? I didn't say I was going to do anything," Jessica responds innocently.

"No. You didn't," Eric concedes, "But I know you. You can't help meddling. I only give it an hour before you're messing with these two," he says with a gesture to Puck and Quinn.

Jessica plays offended for a second before admitting, "Well, I think I'll be able to hold out longer than an hour. Mainly because you two look exhausted and you should probably get some sleep. Especially you Puck. I don't want you driving my sister back on no sleep or even very little sleep. So don't worry, you don't have to get to know us any more right now, you can take the guest room and we'll wake you about an hour before we're leaving for Eric's parents. Sound good?"

"Yeah, great, thanks," Puck stumbles slightly. He thought maybe he'd get to escape back to the car and sleep a little or maybe they'd want him to sleep before driving Quinn back so they'd let him crash on their couch for a little while. But a few consecutive hours in a bed in their guest room was nicer than he was expecting.

Since Eric doesn't seem to be aware of his necessary role, Jessica prompts, "Eric, can you show him to the guest room?" It's not like the kid could have known where it was on his own. She adds to Puck, "And if it's a disaster it's Eric's fault since I haven't been able to make it up there in forever now."

"Thanks honey," Eric responds sarcastically as he gets up. "Come on," he says to Puck and heads for the stairs.

Eric leads them upstairs silently and when they reach the landing after several seconds he points to the doors, right to left, "That's our office, the bathroom, and the guest bedroom." He leads Puck in and hastily hides a video game consul and several games. He adds, "Let's let this be just between us. Jess kinda maybe wanted me to get rid of it. Cool?"

"Sure," Puck says because he didn't particularly care what this guy was hiding from his wife, especially since it was only video games. (Although, as he falls asleep he'll wonder if maybe telling Jessica would put him on her permanent good side. Cause betraying her husband would totally be worth it to be in good with Quinn's sister.)

Eric gives him a T-shirt to wear so he can hang up the one nice button-up he brought with him instead of wrinkling it as he slept and leaves. It only takes Puck ten minutes to fall asleep.

When Eric gets downstairs he gets to fulfill another request of his wife's- to be carried back to their bedroom so she and Quinn could have some girl time before Jessica has to start the long process of getting ready to go (the broken leg had little to do with the length of time it took her to get ready to go anywhere, just a habit of hers). And when Eric gets Jessica back on their bed she has Quinn run back to the living room for the donuts as she quickly tells Eric to call his parents and explain the rather delicate situation they'll be bringing with them later.

Once Eric has left them, Jessica says, "Okay, let's see it."

"See what?" Quinn questions confused as she finishes another donut.

"Dur. The baby induced gut you must be sporting given how much more you're eating," Jessica responds as if it should have been obvious.

Quinn swallows the last bite of her third donut self-consciously and has to remind herself that she has to eat because the baby needed her to. (Though perhaps fried dough could have been substituted for something healthier.) Self-doubt quelled, she questions her sister, avoiding her request, "What is with you and this odd urge to see me fat?"

Jessica shrugs and offers, "I don't know. I'm pretty sure mom and dad are to blame though." Not getting deflected easily, she repeats, "Let's see it."

Quinn sighs and accepts that she's not getting out of this. Though there's something about acknowledging the baby bump, especially with her sister, that feels like one of those things that she shouldn't be doing. (It's like making a connection. With her sister, with her daughter, one that she knows she very likely might not get to keep.) She had been sitting near Jessica's stretched out legs, facing her sister on the bed, so Quinn knelt in the spot she was sitting, rolled up her sweater and let her sister see the ever increasing bump. She turns to show her a side view too and releases her hold on her shirt figuring that two views that lasted about thirty seconds total had to be enough.

She was wrong though. "Wait," Jessica says as Quinn's sweater covered her stomach again, "get over here." She pats the space next to her on the bed.

Quinn moves to the other side of the bed, mirroring her sister's position of leaning against a bunch of pillows stacked against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of her.

Now within reach, Jessica places a hand on Quinn's stomach. She comments, "I know I've seen that you're pregnant on video chat and here, and now I'm feeling it, but most of the time I still can't believe you're pregnant." It's clear by her tone that she's not being judgmental or even commenting on how out of character it seems that she's ended up this way, just stating that it's hard to believe.

Quinn understands that sentiment, "I think that at least a half a dozen times a day."

Jessica feels around a little more and asks, "So no kicks or movement yet?"

"No, I don't think so," Quinn answers uncertainly, "stuff I've read said that it's hard for women to distinguish what movement feels like the first time they're pregnant. I've felt…stuff. I'm just not sure if it was the baby or just digestion. And it's a little early for a kick- that usually happens around the twentieth week and that's still a little ways off for me."

Silence settles between the sisters for a moment before Jessica offers, "I'm sorry about earlier. I know that I came on too strong about you and Puck. I don't have a lot going on in my life right now thanks to basically being confined to this bed so I spend a lot of time thinking about your life, worrying about your life. And I know I don't need to and you don't need me to because you're practically more mature and independent than me at this point so you'll be just fine. So I'm sorry I over reacted and got way too bossy."

"First," Quinn responds, "I do need you, more than you know. But as annoying it can be when you nag about anything, I do need you to worry about me, especially since you're the only family I have left that will."

"Good because I so wasn't going to be able to stop worrying," Jessica interjects.

"And second," Quinn continues, "even if you were kind of pushy, you had a good point. I think you were right and that maybe Puck blames himself for a lot more than I thought. I was thinking about some things he's said and I think he blames himself for mom and dad disowning me. And you're right, I do need to talk to him about that. I used to feel the same way until I realized that them disowning me is their fault, not mine. I've made mistakes, but they're the ones who couldn't deal and would rather abandon and ignore them than be the people they were supposed to be."

"Maybe someday they'll change," Jessica offers optimistically. She knows it's not likely, but she didn't want to see her much younger sister lose hope that she'd ever have her parents in her life again.

"I don't even care if they do anymore," Quinn confesses. She's tired of caring about what they feel or what they may do. She has the baby and herself to worry about and that's already too much, she doesn't need anything extra (though extra seems to keep getting thrown at her anyway).

Quinn turns her head, meets her sisters eyes, and admits getting a bit teary, "I have no idea what I'm going to do. Or what the right thing would be. _Still. _I've been pregnant over four months, I don't have that long left, and I don't know what to do."

Jessica feels awful, because she doesn't know what to tell her sister. She doesn't have an answer; she doesn't know what will be right either. She'd like to be able to tell her sister that she'll make everything okay. They can pay for everything she'll need for her child if she wants to keep her and help her raise her. She won't have to do anything alone if keeping her baby is what she wants. But though they may be able to help out in the baby-sitting department or something, she knows that she unfortunately can't make any of those promises to her sister. So she tells Quinn what she does know, "You'll figure it out. You're the strongest person I know, so I know you'll do the right thing, whatever that may be. And no matter what, when you have her, I'll be right there by your side…near your head. I don't want a place by you with a view. My friend Trish said that if I caught the show from the doctor's angle, it'd be unlikely I'd ever be willing to go through that myself and for now I'd like to keep the option open."

Quinn laughs a little at her sister's squeamishness (though honestly when she started reading that _What to Expect_ book, she got kind of woozy). "Thank you," Quinn says to her sister, for everything she just said and the promise she made to be there when she gives birth. Honestly, Quinn had been waiting until Jessica got her cast off to ask her to be with her because she's terrified of going through it alone.

Jessica groans, but gives in to saying what's on her mind. "I know I'm going to sound like a broken record," she prefaces, "but I think you should talk to Puck about what to do too. I think he's getting pretty good at figuring out the right thing to do. I mean, look at what he did here. He brought you to me, he's barely going to sleep for like a day and a half, and he did it even though he knew he'd be meeting me, which he wasn't far off in thinking I'd punch him in his man parts. I kind of think that after all the heartache he's caused you he deserves a good knee to the crotch. Of course my legs aren't working well enough for that so he got lucky…for now. But he came even though he knew a warm reception was going to be highly unlikely."

Quinn, focusing on the latter half of what her sister's tangent filled comment revealed, asks, "I'm confused. You guys have been pretty nice to him so far. Right? Or am I missing something?"

"No," Jessica answers and she can tell Quinn's still confused. To be honest, she's confusing herself a little at this point thanks to the direction her own thoughts have taken her (maybe she should reduce the amount of pain medication she's taking). "I think Puck is a decent guy and since he cares about you, which is blindingly obvious, I like him well enough too- despite how much he may have been an ass or done the wrong thing in the past," Jessica clarifies, "but he couldn't have known that coming here. For all he knew, I could have been a crazy bitch. I mean, I'm the spawn of our parents Lord and Lady Doom too, it's entirely possible that I could have tortured him the entire time he's here, which I only plan on doing a very tiny amount."

"Okay," Quinn responds slowly. She lost the point of Jessica saying whatever she was saying somewhere. She mulls over the words and remembers that the purpose here was that Jessica was making a point about Puck's apparent ability to do the right thing now. He did seem to be making some good decisions lately. But this whole topic where Jessica was trying to talk her into letting Puck have say in the decision was moot (and she told Jessica about this, hadn't she?). So she goes back to Jessica's original point and informs her, "And I already planned on talking to Puck about what we're going to do. I told him a while ago that I wanted him to be involved in the decision. But that was before this whole take-a-month-off-from-thinking-about-it thing. Addie was right though, that things changed a lot just in this month. I just don't think any of it will matter in the end though. Our options haven't changed, or gotten any easier."

"But maybe in another month," Jessica offers with an optimistic smile.

"Yeah, hopefully," Quinn agrees with a little smile. Though honestly she didn't want to go through a whole additional month of not even trying to make a decision. As much as it had been a relief not to worry about the future sometimes, it had also been driving her crazy that she was absolutely not any closer to knowing what she was going to do and nearly a whole month had passed. She couldn't do that again, next month she has to make progress.

Jessica turns on _Christmas Vacation_ (a tradition for them) and Quinn's nearly asleep ten minutes into it thanks to the lack of talking between them. But then Jessica ruins it commenting, "Are you sure you want to fall asleep here and not upstairs with Puck?"

Quinn grabs one of the pillows next to her and hits Jessica with it (in the chest/face). Then as Jessica snickers at the fact that the question clearly got to Quinn since it resulted in Quinn hitting her, Quinn puts the pillow over her head. She buries her underneath the pillow for two reasons. First, it should hopefully be taken as a sign to Jess that she's tired and she's going to sleep just little bit (she doesn't want to sleep long, she wants to spend time with her sister after coming all this way). And second, being upstairs with Puck didn't sound like nearly as bad of an idea as it should have given the moratorium on her love life.

-o-o-o-

Instead of waking up to the sound of one of the two people able to climb the stairs to the guest room trying to get him up like he thought would happen, Puck wakes up to the sound of his phone ringing. Since "Mom" is flashing on the screen, he can't ignore it and go back to sleep for however long he can. (He was supposed to text her when he had arrived safely in Reading and completely forgot. Crap. He was going to get an earful.)

Yet when he groggily says hello, he's met with Kelyn's voice instead of his mom's. And her, "Jew traitor," isn't the friendliest of greetings.

"What?" he responds, because he has to be dreaming or something.

"I called you a Jew traitor because you're celebrating Christmas," Kelyn explains as if it was the most logical thing in the world.

"First, I'm pretty sure that's not really the phrase you're looking for. Second, I'm not celebrating Christmas, I'm just surrounded by people who are. And third, I think in order to be able to doubt my Jewishness, you'd have to be able to name more than two Jewish holy days," Puck retorts proudly. After just waking up and given how little he's actually slept in the last day or so, he thinks he did pretty damn good. Then again, he was arguing with a ten year old.

"Whatever," she responds and he can tell she's rolling her eyes as she says it. "Put Quinn on the phone," she tells, rather than asks, him.

"Can't. And that's real nice of you to call, call me a name, and then ask to talk to someone else," Puck retorts.

"Can't?" Kelyn questions, "Why can't you? What did you do to her this time?"

Real nice confidence his sister has in him, isn't it? And since when did she know that he had ever done anything wrong in the first place? (She better not be eavesdropping again.) "I didn't do anything wrong," Puck defends, "She's just hanging with her sister." Technically he didn't know if that was true, but since it was what they came here for her to do he assumed it was and he wasn't going to hunt her down and interrupt. He suggests, "Why didn't you just call her if you wanted to talk to her and not me at all?"

"I did. Duh," she answers, rolling her eyes at the fact that she's so clearly smarter than her _older_ brother, "She didn't answer so I was forced to call you."

He's about to respond with something about how crappy that must be for her to have to talk to him when he hears his mom's voice saying, "Kel, be nice and since we both know you won't give me the phone."

This is followed quickly by, "Noah. What the hell happened to calling me?"

"I swear I texted you. I have it here on my phone. If you didn't get it-" he lies.

"Oh don't give me that. You forgot," May interjects, "Lucky for you Quinn let me know that you had both arrived safely at her sister's so I didn't worry long enough to be truly pissed at you."

He'd have to thank Quinn later for saving his ass.

"Anyway," May continues, "she texted and though I texted her back, let her know that I said Merry Christmas again. And to her family as well."

Well, isn't that interesting. Puck raises an eyebrow as he questions his mom, "Did you just ask me to wish people a Merry Christmas from you?"

"Yes," she confirms.

"You really want people to have a good time celebrating the birth of Jesus- who you don't believe in?" he continues because this was unprecedented for his mom.

"Yes," she repeats, getting a little annoyed with her son. She could change. Life kept on changing on her so she never really had much choice, but this was a change that her life wasn't only demanding, but that she wanted to make. She explains to her son, "I can wish people a Merry Christmas."

"Since when?" he asks because he's nearly certain that she never has before.

"Since you're having a baby with a gentile," she returns. She would have said something like since he fell in love with a shiksa instead, but he really didn't seem to like to talk about that so it probably would have been a sore spot. She continues, breezing past it because they both knew that statement had its issues too, "Quinn could put her religious beliefs aside to celebrate Hanukah with us and the least I can do is put mine aside to genuinely wish her a happy holiday of her own."

Puck sighs because there were some really nice changes to his life lately (it just would have been easier, nicer, if they were under different circumstances). "That's really nice of you. Thanks Ma'," he says sincerely.

She shrugs and jokes, "Well, I can't fault a girl for believing in Jesus- _he_ was Jewish."

Puck laughs a little and realizes that his phone had read "Mom," which was his mom's cell number label, and why would his mom be calling on her cell from home? "Are you and Kel going somewhere?" he asks, because usually they never went anywhere on Christmas. There wasn't much point, nothing was really open.

"Your grandma's," she answers, "she came back early."

"Were they losing too much money?" Puck asks, because his grandma and her old lady friends usually hit up either Atlantic City and/or Indian casinos for the whole month of December and the only times they had ever come back early was because they all went over their spending/losing limits.

"No. Your grandma actually came out ahead. Or so she thinks. I'm not sure her math was right. But one of the ladies had to come back early because her daughter went into labor and had triplets a few days ago so she went to help out and the rest of them just decided to call it quits a week early this year," May explains. Personally, she thought Ruth (her ex-husband's mother) was glad for the excuse- the trip seemed to be more and more exhausting for her the last few years.

"Have fun with her then, I guess," Puck offers, but really his grandma was pretty laid back (unless she forgot to take her meds- then her dementia kind of made her…unpredictable). Usually they just watched movies or TV with her. Oddly enough, she was a big Joss Whedon fan. Puck wasn't much into any of that so he found trips to his grandma's pretty boring (as he knew Kelyn did too- that explained the bad mood she seemed to be in).

"We will," May returns (she was really starting to like that Buffy show). "And you have a good day too. And make sure you give Quinn's sister my number. No arguing and you're grounded if you don't. Love you. Bye," she hangs up immediately and hopes Puck is too lazy to call her back and argue.

Puck is indeed too lazy to try and argue with his mom. He gets why she'd want Jessica's number anyway and he had already figured he should give Jessica and her husband his (he wasn't going to ask for theirs- he didn't want to have the option of making the first move).

He finally glances at the time on his phone as he's hanging up and notices that it's just after two so he got to sleep about three hours or so. He had never asked what time they were leaving so he didn't actually know how much longer he could possibly sleep. He imagined it couldn't be much longer though so he decides he might as well get up. Not seeing anyone upstairs, he stumbles downstairs. With no one in the living room, he keeps wandering until he finds his way into the kitchen, where he finds Eric standing in front of the stove and peering into it like he's checking on something to see if it's done.

"Hey," Eric greets, "I wasn't going to wake you up for another hour."

"My sister and my mom took care of that. Called about ten minutes ago and both had something they were mad at me for," Puck responds.

"Why were they mad at you?" Eric asks and hopes it isn't anything really bad. So far he kind of liked Puck, he didn't want that to change.

"I don't know why my sister was really. I think she was just in a bad mood. But I forgot to call my mom and let her know we made it here okay," Puck answers.

"Ooh," okay, he gets why any mom would be mad about that.

"Luckily Quinn thought of letting her know so my mom wasn't too mad," Puck supplies, he's really got to remember to thank her for that.

So this looking out for each other thing seems to go both ways, Jess was going to find that interesting. Eric, on the other hand, would rather not meddle and just deal with whatever's before him. "Want some coffee?" he offers because he figures high doses of caffeine would probably be appreciated.

"Yeah, sure. Thanks," Puck answers.

Eric pours Puck a cup of coffee and hands it to him before returning to the oven and opening it to look in it again. He opens it wider and asks, "Do those look done to you?"

Honestly, Puck isn't even sure what's in the oven. They're little round…things. "Uh, I'm usually pretty lost in the kitchen," he confesses. Last time he was lost, yesterday, he had just asked Quinn though. So he offers, "Maybe you could take a picture of them to show your wife and ask if they look done."

"That would be a good idea…if Jessica could cook either. She tries sometimes, but it's usually disastrous. We eat a lot of take out," Eric explains. He pokes at one of the mini-quiche again and shuts the oven uncertainly. This wasn't supposed to be part of his day. He continues, "Usually Jess buys a pie or a cake to take over to my parents, but I went to get one too late this year and not only were they sold out, but they were closed. So I went to every other bakery I could find and it was the same thing everywhere. Apparently I should have gone before yesterday afternoon. So I found these frozen mini quiches in our freezer and thought they'd be okay to take. I figured I'd just pop them in the oven for a few minutes and we'd have something to take over. I didn't think it'd be so hard."

"Quinn can cook, maybe ask her," Puck suggests.

"I think I'm going to have to," he says and then his eyes turn up to the ceiling and he listens for a second before continuing, "and lucky for me it sounds like she just finished drying her hair." He adds as he heads out, "Oh, and I guess that means the guest bath will be free now if you want to take a shower."

Seconds later Eric comes back into the kitchen with Quinn trailing behind him in what he assumes must be one of her sister's robes. "You're not supposed to be up yet," she says to him as she passes on her way to the oven.

"Should have told my mom that," and before he forgets, "thanks for letting her know we got here though. And she says Merry Christmas again."

"Well one of us needed to and I figured you were too tired to," Quinn responds as she opens the oven and inspects the quiche. She reaches for a potholder and takes them out. She sighs and asks both men, "How did neither one of you think brown was the wrong color for quiche?"

Puck shrugs and responds, "What's quiche?" He honestly didn't know.

And Eric defends, "I thought maybe they were supposed to be that color. Maybe they're mushroom."

Quinn picks up the box from the counter and responds, "Even though the box says spinach quiche?"

Okay, maybe he should have known better, Eric relents and doesn't continue to argue.

"I brought cookies and maybe I can find something else to throw together after I get ready," Quinn offers, because she felt bad about showing up at Eric's family's Christmas nearly empty handed too.

"Thank you," Eric says gratefully. He turns off the oven and tells himself he's not fiddling with it again unless he absolutely has to.

Quinn heads off to do her make up with her sister- hopefully quickly.

Silence settles awkwardly in the kitchen. Eric busies himself for a few seconds by throwing the apparently way over cooked quiche in the trash, but after he's done they're both left just standing awkwardly alone together.

"So, uh," Eric begins, hoping something would just come to him and unfortunately it didn't seem like that was happening. It takes him a minute, but he finally thinks of, "You wanna play that deer hunting game Quinn got me?"

"Sure," Puck accepts. Fake hunting sounded fun to him. But… "Wait, when are we leaving though?"

"In an hour," Eric answers after a glance at the clock on the microwave.

"Maybe I should grab a shower so I'm ready to go first. I've frequently been accused of losing track of time when playing video games," Puck says, trying to be responsible. Though honestly if Eric wants to insist they play first, he's cool with it.

"Good point. Jess is always telling me that too," Eric agrees. He tells Puck that there are clean towels in the bathroom and as Puck heads to the upstairs bath to take a shower Eric decides he should follow Puck's idea and change his clothes and get ready to go before playing.

Fifteen minutes later Puck comes downstairs again and, surprisingly, finds the deer hunting game plugged into the TV in the living room but Eric nowhere in sight. He heads to the kitchen again and finds Eric there again-this time rifling through cupboards.

"The game's set up out there if you want to play," Eric tells him, "I'm going to find something to put together for us to bring before I can play. Jess…let's just say she got mad when she found out I ruined the quiche and she doesn't want Quinn fixing it because then it'd mean Quinn in the kitchen and Jess wouldn't be able to be with her cause there's not really anywhere comfortable for her in here. So I've got to make something first. You can go ahead an play though, if you want."

Puck considers going ahead and playing the video game. It'd give him another break from having to interact with anyone and possibly therefore screwing up with any of them. But then again playing a video game when there's other stuff to be done is kind of immature, right? He's pretty sure that that's what his mom would tell him and she has pretty good judgment of stuff like this. So he decides that the right thing to do would be to try and help.

"I've done a little bit of cooking, usually with someone helping me, but maybe I could help," Puck offers.

"Sure, have a look around and see if there's anything we could use to make anything edible," Eric gratefully accepts. So far all he's got is that they're either going to have to bring Oreos or ramen.

Puck starts opening cupboards and having a look around, which he feels out of place doing but the guy who owns the place told him to so he knows it's okay. He finds a bottle of vodka (among other bottles of alcohol) in one cupboard and jello in another so he checks, "I'm guessing jello shots are out even though you have everything you need for them."

"That's more appropriate for surviving a Fabray family event and I don't think they have enough time to set up even if some of my family would be cool with jello shots," Eric answers. He pulls out a box of pasta and asks, "Have you seen anything that would give us something to do with pasta?"

"Uh, I know some kugel's are made with noodles, but I've never made one and I've never paid attention when anyone else has either," Puck answers, knowing that probably wasn't very helpful. "Plus you probably don't want to make something Jewish anyway," he realizes.

"As long as we have something to take, I don't care," Eric says honestly. He really wishes he had gone grocery shopping like Jess had asked him to. He thought that since they were going over to his parents for dinner tonight and had take out last night and since he had conveniently found something to bring in their freezer, they'd be set for a few days and he wouldn't have to fight the crowded pre-Christmas supermarkets, he could just wait until after the holiday. Wow was he really wrong about that.

Scanning the countertops, Puck notices, "You guys have a lot of fruit."

They do and, "We have sugar and flour and stuff too. Any chance you know how to make a pie or cobbler or something?"

"Nope," Puck answers honestly.

Eric sighs and settles on, "Okay, it can't be that hard though. I'll look up a recipe and figure out something easy…hopefully."

Struck with a sudden idea, Puck suggests as Eric's heading towards the living room to hit the stairs and head up to his computer, "Or you could just cut it all up, throw it in a bowl, and call it fruit salad."

Damn. That was a much better idea. First Quinn points out his obvious lack of judgment and now Puck had had two ideas that really should have occurred to him first. Eric was so not having the best day mentally. He blames Jessica for that. She kept him up all night. Though, on second thought, being up all night with his wife was totally worth the slower brain function today. "Yeah, that sounds easier, let's do that," Eric declares, turning around and grabbing cutting boards and knives as Puck collects all the fruit they have laying about.

As they get started cutting up fruit, Eric says gratefully, "Thanks for helping out. I'm glad someone here is thinking well today."

Puck shrugs and admits, "It's the least I could do with you guys not-"

"Hitting you in the balls," Eric interjects, laughing to himself at the idea.

"Yeah," Puck confirms even though he was going to try and put it better this time. "I mean…if there was ever a guy that got my sister in the same situation that I got Quinn into, I know I'd do a lot worse to him than just hit him in the balls. Wouldn't you?" Puck asks. The guy mentioned having a sister, so he figures he should get this.

"Probably," Eric agrees. He doesn't want Puck to get the wrong impression though so he tries to explain to the kid what apparently hasn't occurred to him, "We're not going to do anything to you though. You did something really good in bringing Quinn here and…it's just not right to do something to you after that. You know? From everything I've heard, you've really stepped up and you're dealing with the situation as best as anyone could. Even if it were my biological sister, even though I think of Quinn in the same way as my sister, it's hard to punch the guy that helped her into a bad situation when all he's been trying to do lately is the right thing."

Puck has too much weight on his shoulders to take Eric's implied compliment seriously. He's also generally uncomfortable with meaningful conversations, especially with guys (who he doesn't know), so he shrugs and half-jokes, "Well, I'm pretty sure I'd still hit the guy, if it were my sister, no matter how much good he seemed to be trying to do. Though the school counselor has been telling me for years that I have anger management problems…"

"So does my uncle Ron. He's been going to these group meetings for it for a few years now. He'll be there today, you should talk to him," Eric mentions, which gets him started telling Puck a little bit about every family member that's going to be there.

Eventually, as they're finishing up, Eric decides he should say something that occurred to him as soon as Puck got there this morning. He had been thinking maybe it wouldn't be necessary, despite what theories his wife may have, but he's definitely starting to see all the stuff that gave Jess theories in the first place (especially in the way he talks about Quinn), so he figures he should go ahead and say it. "You know, as great as it was that you brought Quinn here," he tells Puck again, this time adding, "If you're still around in the future, you have to give me a heads up before doing something that big. I mean, my Christmas gifts for Jess were pretty good. She had been feeling unattractive with the cast so I got her lingerie- which went with her gift of hanging mistletoe over the bed- and I got her her favorite perfume and some other little stuff she'd like, like movies and stuff, too. But you driving Quinn all the way here makes my gifts look like crap in comparison and sisters and best friends always compare so from now on when you feel like giving her a big ass gift, do me a solid and give me a heads up."

"Yeah, sure," Puck agrees immediately. It hadn't occurred to him that he was kind of breaking a guy code with his gift to Quinn. Though really, since he hadn't met the guy, he wasn't. But still, he's betrayed enough guys in his life, so even though he thought he definitely wouldn't be the one calling Quinn's family, he knows that he'll at least be texting Eric with a heads up in the future (he hopes- because like Eric said, it depends on whether or not he's still around whether anything he said matters).

Eric and Puck get thirty minutes to play the deer hunting game even though they only had ten minutes before they were supposed to leave when they finished the fruit salad. Jessica wasn't ready to go yet (in her defense, Quinn wiping off make-up she'd put on her was part of the reason Jessica got behind in getting ready herself). Though it didn't really matter that they weren't leaving at the time they planned on leaving. Eric's family gatherings were pretty casual. People came and went whenever was most convenient for them.

Finally though, around four thirty, after Jessica is maneuvered into the back seat of Eric's car, Puck and Quinn find themselves in her car following Eric and Jessica to his parent's house.

-o-o-o-

As they see Eric pull over and park about half a mile in front of them, Quinn starts to panic.

In the bathroom as they were getting ready, Jessica had mentioned that she had only given Eric's parents the highlights of her situation. Pregnant, abandoned by their parents, coming today with the father of the baby, and that was about it. Jessica said she skipped over her and Puck's "non"- romantic situation because what was the point of explaining something complicated when it wasn't necessary?

Now though, as Puck's trying to park her car near where Eric parked his, she's realized that she doesn't want to go in there and answer any questions about her and Puck. What is she supposed to say? Is she supposed to get into their on-again-off-again situation just because someone asks and it would be rude not to answer? Is she supposed to be vague? Because that one hasn't exactly been working for her more often than not. She had an idea of how to handle things, a way that could make things easier, but it probably wasn't the best idea so she had tried to let it go and just tell herself that no one would probably ask them anything so she shouldn't worry. But here she is, riddled with anxiety because Puck is putting the car in park.

As he reaches for the door handle after turning the car off, her panic gets to her and she says, "Wait."

He turns to her, concerned.

"Would you mind if we gave the impression that everything isn't as complicated as it has been?" she forces out.

He thinks on it for a second, but he's got no idea what she's talking about so he guesses and asks, "Like how?"

She takes a deep breath and tells herself that everything will be easier this way so she should just do it. She explains (nervously), "Like maybe let everyone assume that I ended up pregnant in the expected way and not through the disaster where I was dating your best friend and everything."

Puck knows she just said words that, strung together, did make sense. But honestly, he still has no idea what she's getting at. "I know I got some sleep, but apparently it wasn't enough to understand whatever you're trying to say. So just tell me what you want to do and I'll do it," Puck tells her.

"Pretend we're together," Quinn says in a rush, like she was ripping off a band-aid. She's quick to correct herself, "Well, not necessarily together. We don't need to be all over each other or anything- I think that would just make things weird in this situation. But just…don't act like we're not together. That way everyone can think that we ended up like this because we were just two teenagers who were dating and ended up here and not mention the messes we actually made to get here."

Pretend they're together and don't tell anyone he screwed over his best friend, yeah, that's an idea he's all on board with. "Sure. That's fine with me," he agrees. He's still confused as to what pretending to be together will mean, but he figures he'll find out eventually.

Eventually comes as soon as they're on the doorstep as Quinn takes his free hand in her free hand (both of them carrying food- him, the fruit salad, her, her cookies, as Eric had his hands full rolling his wife in, in a wheel chair he'd popped out of his trunk).

Once they step inside the house, Quinn feels like she's caught in a whirlwind. It's kind of a long path to the dinning room because it's a fairly big (and one story- hence the reason Eric whipped out the wheel chair) house, but it feels even longer than it is because she's introduced to every single person there along the way.

There's Eric's uncle Ron and his aunt Gina, who she's pretty sure she's never met before. Then there's his parents Molly and Dan, and his brother Austin who she's met twice before, when her sister married Eric. Though she doesn't know any of these people well, or at all, she's sure that they all seem to be smiling more than is natural and they seem to be trying extra hard to be extremely nice. Not like they're being fake, but like they're being so…careful. It's like they know that she's not exactly in an easy situation, so they're trying too hard to act like everything is normal instead of just being normal.

Still she makes it to the dinning room and puts the cookies down with the buffet of other food on the table. She doesn't realize how tightly she's been squeezing Puck's hand until, after putting the fruit salad he was carrying down, he leans in and whispers, "That's quite a grip Fabray- for a girl."

She squeezes his hand harder for a second just for that "for a girl" comment, and then eases up. She can see Jessica eyeing their joined hands and she knows that's going to be a conversation at some point. But for right now it can't be as Eric's mom, Molly, is asking exclaiming about how it was so nice of her to make such a long drive to spend such little time with her sister while she hears Dan, Eric's dad, ask Puck about what highways he took to get them here.

Conversing with Eric's various family members is nice. They don't mention the fact that she's pregnant or what she knows they know is going on with her parents. Instead they mostly talk to her about school and her job with Macy's. She's comfortable enough that when Eric, his uncle, and his dad, try to draw Puck away with some football game that's on and sports talk, she tells him it's okay to leave her side when he tries to come up with an excuse to stay by her.

One of the more awkward moments for Quinn is when she's chatting with Eric's brother Austin. It's not anything to do with her or the baby or her situation that makes it awkward. It's all Austin. He had started out with, "You're probably surprised to see me here alone given the last time I saw you I was with Amy and everyone at Eric and Jessica's wedding thought we'd be the next two to head down the aisle." This rant quickly descended into, "Then she up and threw away a five year relationship. Walked out our front door with some crap about 'maybe we just didn't love each other enough.' I should sell all the stuff she still has in our apartment." His bitterness made her quite uncomfortable. (Plus, it made her wonder how easy it could be to become him. To believe in something that doesn't work out.)

Thankfully Austin finds his way to the wine and stays there long enough for Quinn to escape to the kitchen where her sister is hanging out with Molly and Gina. With just the women in the kitchen, they ask her some questions about her pregnancy, but nothing intrusive or uncomfortable. Mostly just about her experience with morning sickness and what she's been eating/craving lately, which dissolves into both Molly and Gina telling stories from their pregnancies (three each) and Molly's daughter's experience with having twins.

"Maybe you'll find out what we're talking about first hand soon," Molly hints to Jessica, "after you're all better of course."

"I don't think it's the right time, not until all of the business stuff is settled. But hopefully that will all be resolved soon," Jessica responds to her mother-in-law and Quinn can tell that her sister is just saying what will appease the woman. Not that Molly seems like the type that would push and she doesn't seem to be now, but Jessica must just not want to tell her that, from what Quinn gathered from talking to her sister earlier, they're not ready for kids and not just because they have no idea what they're going to do about Eric's stores or for careers and money.

When Quinn excuses herself from the ladies to help herself to a second round of food at the buffet they have set up, she see's that as the game is at a commercial break, Puck is having his own encounter with Austin- and a very different one than Quinn had.

"Maybe I should just call her. Maybe this is a test and she's trying to see how much I want to be with her so I should go after her or I'll fail and she'll leave me for real," Austin panics. It also seems like he's on the verge of tears and rather drunk.

Puck didn't seem to be paying much attention to Austin's whining until Austin took out his phone and repeated that he should call his ex. Puck snatches Austin's phone from his hand with a simple, "You'll regret that when you're sober."

"No, I need to call her," Austin insists and tries to come after Puck and the phone.

"Heads up," Puck calls across the sectional couch to Eric looks away from the TV just in time to catch the cell phone Puck threw his way. Puck explains simply, "He's trying to call the girl that dumped him. Anywhere you can hide that?"

"Yep," Eric says and gets up to head for the kitchen and the vegetable crisper in the refrigerator. He's done this before with his brother and that's one place he never looks.

"Son, we've talked about this. Never call a girl once she's dumped you. Don't even acknowledge her if you run into her. There's no upper hand to be gained by admitting that you remember her," Dan advises his son.

Quinn gets interrupted from continuing to listen as Eric is suddenly standing beside her. She had long stopped piling her plate with food and had just been watching, but now that she was caught she returned to putting things on her plate bashfully.

Eric grabs a cookie beside her and offers, "Puck's a real good guy."

God, not him too.

Eric notices the look Quinn gets and knowing his wife, he can guess what caused it. He amends, "I'm not saying that to meddle or anything. I'm just saying… you have good taste. You know Jess worries about you, basically being alone in Lima, and I do too. But if Puck is any indication of your friends, well, I guess I'm just saying that I'm less worried."

She doesn't know what to say to that, but she feels like saying thank you because his reasoning makes her feel good.

But before she can say the only response she's thought of, he adds, "You have really good judgment. I hope you know that."

"Uh," she begins with a gesture to her stomach, because good judgment was not something she'd ever say she's had lately.

"That was just unlucky. I mean, think about how many people in the world get away with exactly the same thing, but not the same results," Eric points out. "No, you have good judgment," he declares again, "believe it." With that, Eric grabs a chicken drumstick and heads back to the couch and the game.

As Quinn heads back to the kitchen with her food, she realizes that just looking at her new friends, it would look like she has good judgment. In everything else, she's not so sure she does, but she knows she's been trying hard to make the right decisions and maybe that means Eric is right and she is exercising good judgment. She just hopes she continues to in the future, because everything just seems to be getting more confusing so she knows she'll really need it.

Overall, it's a pretty easy evening; just some general chit-chat and hanging out. Quinn doesn't find it particularly Christmasy though, if that makes sense. It's just that without any exchanging of gifts (everyone in Eric's family claimed they were too old for that sort of thing- now they just brought a bottle of wine each), or Christmas music, and with being sparse on Christmas decorations (which Eric's parents were apparently always were), it just didn't feel that much like Christmas. (Though Quinn supposes that that feeling may also stem from the fact that she's not with her parents for the first time ever on Christmas day.)

Quinn's ready to conclude that it was a nice quiet Christmas until she comes out of the bathroom, after they had been there for about three hours, and she hears the strumming of a guitar. When she had left the living room, where everyone had been, she didn't hear anyone mentioning having an instrument or wanting music played, but when she comes back she finds everyone encouraging Puck to play, which he seems ready to do as he tunes a guitar (that she knows isn't his because he didn't bring one with him).

"I seriously don't know any Christmas songs though," Puck warns (again).

As Dan wonders out loud (to himself), "Are there any Hanukah songs?", Eric tells Puck, "It doesn't matter. Play anything."

"Yeah, Eric said yours and Quinn's glee club was really good, so let's get a demonstration," Molly chimes in.

Crap. Quinn hopes that doesn't mean they're going to ask her to sing too. She's never sung in front of her sister and she doesn't know why, but the idea of doing so freaks her out more than going on stage in front of another auditorium full of people. So, since no one seems to have seen her yet, Quinn steps back into the hallway to hide so maybe they won't ask her to sing if they simply don't see her there.

Then, he starts to play. Before Quinn can figure out why it sounds familiar, he starts singing the lyrics and it becomes instantly clear. "I'm a Believer," by the Monkees.

_I thought love was only true in fairy tales  
Meant for someone else but not for me.  
Love was out to get me  
That's the way it seemed.  
Disappointment haunted all my dreams._

There's not a single thought in Quinn's head for the first minute and a half of the song. It wasn't that surprising that he would sing if people asked him to, Puck certainly liked attention. What was really surprising was the song. She was definitely going to ask him about that…maybe.

(What if it means something? Which is a thought she's further inclined to believe, and makes her stomach do back flips and hands shake simultaneously, as he looks at her every time the line "I couldn't leave her if I tried" comes up.)

(Puck chose the song because old people tended to like the Monkees, he had learned. Plus it didn't hurt that he actually meant some of the lyrics for one of the people in the room.)

"When I mentioned he could sing, I was kind of hoping he'd suck. I mean, he's hurt you, I'm your sister, I have to screw with him at least a little bit," Jessica says beside Quinn.

Quinn startles slightly. She had completely missed her sister rolling up to her. "So you're to blame for this?" she questions.

"At some point or another today I may have told everyone that Eric raved about your glee club and that Puck was supposed to be especially talented and played the guitar, which Dan happened to have in his attic- mid life crisis purchase," Jessica confesses easily. It wasn't like she was hiding it. Besides, worst case scenario, Puck either could have refused and looked kind of rude to people he'll never see again or he could sing and be bad and suffer a couple of minutes of embarrassment. But apparently even though her opinion of good music greatly differs from her husband's, and even though Quinn's eyes aren't exactly clear through the love goggles she's _so _sporting, apparently they were both right when they claimed that he/ the whole club, was good.

"A duet would be adorable," Jessica comments firstly because she's never heard her sister sing and wants to (well, it's possible Quinn used to sing during church services, but Jessica never really paid attention/was awake) and secondly because she really does think it'd be adorable.

"No," Quinn turns down, because, again this crowd makes her nervous (as does the idea of singing with Puck…again).

Puck has everyone joining in with the "na na na's" and "I'm a believer" repetitions. He finishes the song with the joyous tone and everyone claps happily…for all of five seconds before Eric starts in with, "Do another one." He's quickly supported by the rest of his family and though he doesn't particularly like playing music that will go over well with this crowd, Puck can't resist performing (it feels good to have people like his singing/playing).

"This one's a little bit slower, just to change it up- a little bit at least, the Monkees covered this one so still kind of the same artist," Puck says and clears his throat, feeling awkward about explaining his singing (he felt much more comfortable simply playing and singing rather than talking).

He strums the guitar softly and begins, "When I was a young boy, my momma she said to me: There's only one girl in the world for you and she probably lives in Tahiti." It's "Whole Wide World" by Wreckless Eric originally though famously covered by the Monkees in the eighties.

Eric's parents get up from their seats on the couch and start slow dancing by the time Puck is a verse into the song. Eric's aunt and uncle quickly join in.

"How have you only slept with him once?" Jessica wonders as she watches Puck play and sing.

First, that was not a question she was expecting from her sister (though she should have), especially during such a sweet song. And second, she's so not talking to her about that. (Nor is she going to explain that it wasn't just _once_ despite being only one night.)

"I mean, he's suddenly so much hotter and you see him like this all the time," Jessica continues to comment and quickly moves on (clearly saying every thought that pops in her head), "Do you think he could teach Eric how to play the guitar? Because I'm pretty sure that that's what's making him seem so sexy right now, which I kind of feel bad for thinking considering your whole thing with him and because he's like a decade younger than me. Kind of feel like a cougar. But we both have skype accounts, could you let him use yours so he can teach Eric over it?"

"Teach me what?" Eric asks, coming to stand by his wife. He takes her hand because it seemed like the thing to do- to hold the hand of the girl he'd go the whole wide world to find and feels lucky that he did when he was only twenty.

"How to play the guitar. I want you to learn," she tells him, eyes still on Puck. She turns her eyes up to her husband and says mischievously, "Believe me, you will enjoy being able to play. I guarantee it."

"Really?" he asks, with an eyebrow quirked (and already planning on talking to Puck about getting some guitar lessons). "That's right," he recalls, "you dated a lot of guys in bands before me. You've always had a thing for musicians."

"If you knew that you really should have taken up playing something a while ago," Jessica suggests.

"And you know I dated a lot of girls that liked sports but you still refuse to go to a single game of any kind with me," Eric points out.

"Fair enough," Jessica concedes. She offers a compromise, "If you learn how to play any instrument- only the cool ones though- then I will go to one game of each sporting variety with you when we have the money to do it."

"Sounds good to me," Eric agrees with a smile.

Quinn had stopped listening a while ago (somewhere during Jessica's rant about playing the guitar). She needed to talk to Puck. Her sister had been telling her to and she knew she was right, but still, she had intended to put it off for the rest of the month (at least). Yet as she listened to him sing "I'd go the whole wide world, I'd go the whole wide world, just to find her," and he'd look at her, she knew that she needed to clear some things up about their past before she could move on to thinking about the future. She needed to talk to him soon.

After the song ends Eric's mom Molly asks, "Do you know any Neil Diamond?"

Puck looks to Quinn, accusingly.

Before he can ask if she told them about his comprehensive knowledge of Neil Diamond songs for his mom's sake, Quinn defends, "I didn't tell them."

Quinn looks to Jessica because this seemed like her toying.

Jessica holds her hands up and claims, "I didn't say anything either. I wish I had though, that was a missed opportunity on my part."

The room was getting a little awkward and even though Puck didn't like playing Neil, if Quinn had asked, he would have. But apparently this was just coincidence or something. He's been trying to make a good impression on all these people though, for Quinn's sake, so though he's not crazy about the idea, he decides to be honest. "I know a lot of Neil Diamond actually. My mom's a big fan," Puck finally responds to Molly (the rest of the room, takes his pause and Quinn and Jessica's comments to mean that he was surprised by someone here asking him about an artist he apparently plays a lot). "What do you want to hear?" he asks, because, sadly, it'd be unlikely someone would name a Neil Diamond song he didn't know.

"Anything is fine," Molly tells him, because he was the playing and besides, she liked all of Neil's songs.

Quinn knows she's in trouble when he smirks.

"Well," Puck drawls, "there is one song that I just learned for my mom and Quinn was a pretty big part of it. I don't think I could perform it nearly as well unless she were to do it again with me."

Yeah, she saw this coming from the second she saw the guitar in his hands. So Quinn doesn't bother fighting it. She tells herself that her nerves are completely uncalled for because this is a nice, friendly environment- probably much more so than glee club originally was for her or any performance at school has been for the club. Or at competitions actually- it doesn't seem like they're going to be popular at the next one. Okay, so maybe this will be the easiest circumstance she'll ever sing in. (She just hopes her voice believes her and works.)

Luckily before the first line she has to join him in singing comes along, she's relaxed to the point that singing the line just comes naturally. She had been watching him sing the beginning of the song and suddenly felt at ease, standing next to him and smiling as he smiled at her and they stole glances out of the corners of their eyes.

When they finish to a round of applause, Puck smirks again and, again, Quinn knows what he's about to do. "I think Quinn should sing something alone," he says.

"Do you know how to play anything that I would know the lyrics to?" she asks smartly and figuring he hadn't thought of that.

His smirk gets bigger as he starts to play what she easily recognizes as the beginning of "Like a Prayer." "You like Madonna right? And you didn't seem to have any trouble learning the lyrics for glee club," he returns.

"You know the lyrics too thanks to glee club, I think you should join in," she tells him, trying to use his own point against him.

"I forget the lyrics to songs I don't like as soon as we're done with him," he tells her, "I just know how to play it cause Kelyn _made_ me learn last summer."

"I'd love to hear some Madonna," Jessica breaks in. God only knew how long the two of them could debate about who was singing and who wasn't even though neither of them seemed to mind the idea of singing. She didn't get it, but she was excited about hearing her sister sing "Like a Prayer."

Puck starts the song again and Quinn starts singing it. After hearing Rachel sing it (and a few other people having lines), she really doesn't think her voice is suited for it that well, but she does love Madonna and it's not like being fantastic really matters here anyway. So she sings and has fun with it. Until she gets a little surprise in Puck picking up the pace and the intensity of his playing after she finishes the first repetition of "it feels like home." She's not sure how to describe it, she thinks maybe Mr. Schue would say he's attacking it in the way he's playing or that Artie might say he's playing the hell out of it. Either way, the slightly faster pace and tone he's keeping is easier for her to sing than it would have been if he had played the song like they had done it for glee club (she couldn't hold the long big notes like Rachel or Mercedes or Kurt).

Around the first "just like a prayer" bit, Jessica joins in with her and wheels herself a little closer as she's dancing in her chair as much as she can. (That's one thing that really sucks about the broken leg- no dancing. Going out dancing with Eric is so going to be one of the first things she does once her leg is better.)

Puck even joins in at the very end of the song, at the start of the many recitations of "just like a prayer my voice will take you there," bits. Also, by the end, most of them are dancing and they're all having a good time even if none of the four older people had ever liked Madonna.

After the song finishes, the clapping is over, and the "thank yous" from Quinn and Puck are said for all of the compliments from everyone, Puck takes off the guitar and hands it back to Dan. He tells Quinn, "At least now we can tell Rachel that we practiced over break."

"I was planning on telling her we did anyway. She gets a little scary when you don't do what she wants," Quinn admits. As much as she had come to really like Rachel, she took the schedule she tried to force all of them into very seriously and didn't take anyone not practicing when she wanted them to very well. Maybe she needs more hobbies (or for Finn to distract her if they could fix the problems they were having).

"Which one was Rachel?" Jessica asks, thinking back to the video of the sectionals performance she saw and trying to remember the girls.

"The one who did the solo," Quinn answers at the same time Puck says, "Midget with brown hair." Quinn hits him on the arm for that as she gives him a disapproving glare. "That was mean," she tells him.

"What? It's true. She has brown hair and she's like the shortest person. She's half a foot shorter than you," Puck argues.

"Oh my word," Jessica drawls out, telling her in-laws, "the girl that did the solo for their competition performances was so good." She amends quickly, "Not that you guys weren't great. You are. You're fantastic."

"But Rachel is better," Quinn adds, "we know. She's the type of person that, ten years from now, we'll all be saying we knew her when as we come across her on covers of gossip magazines at the grocery store or see her accepting an award at some major televised award show." Honestly, she doesn't know how she ever made fun of Rachel's singing. Rachel was an easy target, posting things online for everyone to see that, it made her vulnerable. But somehow in all the stupid comments she left, she never really listened and she wishes she had because now she knows she was missing out. Rachel was one of those people that you just know was going somewhere, was going to do something big and impressive with her life. (She wonders if anyone ever thought that about her…before.) It would have been nice to have someone in her life like that sooner.

Fishing in his pocket (for his keys), Eric offers, "I think I still have the copy of the DVD I made from the show in the car."

And that's how they end up watching Rachel's solo and the rest of their sectionals performance and telling the tale of having their songs stolen to Eric's family. (As they watch, and for the sixth time that night, they hold hands.)

They actually have some good feedback. Of course they say nice things to them about what a good job they did, but Dan adds that he liked "Someone To Love" much better because he could single out a few more people's voices. His wife and Eric agree with him that though they're not familiar with glee clubs and maybe singing as a group is most important, it was really impressive to hear the amazing voices individuals had by them having a line here or there. They're going to have to pass that along to Mr. Schue, maybe the judges think the same way.

They don't hang out much past finishing the video. It's getting late and Quinn left a few things at her sisters (Jessica wanted her to so they could say goodbye there). So they thank everyone for having them over, Puck tells Austin where he hid his phone, and they leave.

Once they get back to Jessica and Eric's it's nearing ten o'clock so they don't have much time before they really need to be on the road.

Quinn gathers her things quickly and puts them by the door ready to pick up on their way out. Jessica is spread out on the couch again, having requested that Eric put her there.

Eric and Puck leave the sisters alone by hanging out in the kitchen. Eric asks Puck for guitar lessons, whenever he has time, because he might as well, he did make a deal with his wife. Puck doesn't think he'll have the time, but he doesn't say that, he wants these people to like him so he just agrees and says he'll set up one of those skype accounts to do it over and they can get started whenever. (He hopes that Eric's business troubles that Quinn told him about keep him too busy to do anything for a while.)

In the living room, Quinn hugs her sister tight.

"I wish you didn't have to leave already," Jessica confesses, "Or at all."

"I know, me too," Quinn agrees. It would be nice to be here, to hope everything difficult with her life right now would go away simply by changing location.

Quinn pulls away and Jessica promises, "You know by this time next month I should have this cast off and being in a car should be easier so the first thing I'm going to do is come see you."

"You know, if you can't right away, if you guys have other stuff going on, it's okay," Quinn tells her sister because as much as she'd like to see her again as soon as possible, she knows her sister isn't having the easiest life right now either and there's a lot that she probably needs to do at home. She adds, hopefully, "You could always wait until a few weeks after you get the cast off, that way you'll be around to see our regional's competition in person."

"Or Eric and I could just make the drive again and we could see you and come back for it," Jessica says, though honestly she knows that things could come up and they could be too busy with their failing businesses to manage that. But she hopes she'll be able to see her sister every few weeks once she gets a walking cast and doesn't have to be stretched out across the back seat uncomfortably and without a seatbelt as she had just been on the ride to and from her in-laws.

"That sounds like a better idea," Quinn agrees, because she does want to see her sister as much as possible.

Jessica smiles at her sister. She lets the smile fall from her face after a second so she could tell her seriously, "Everything is going to work out fine. I know it." She says it with confidence because she knows Quinn needs to hear it (though she doesn't know everything will be okay, she just hopes it will be, for Quinn's sake).

"Yeah, how?" Quinn questions her sister.

"Because I'm a genius," Jessica returns just as seriously. She maintains that stoicism for all of five seconds before she dissolves into laughter with Quinn.

After the laughter dies down, Jessica answers her sister for real, telling her honestly, "Really, I know everything will work out because you're the strongest person I know. And you're smart and you're mature way beyond your years- more mature than me," she says as she sticks her tongue out at her sister playfully, "so you'll be fine because you'll come up with some way to be and even if there are obstacles or it seems impossible, you'll make everything work, because that's just who you are. You're the girl that gets everything she wants because she makes it happen."

"I get it from you," Quinn returns sweetly, because it's sort of true. Her sister had been a big influence on the person she is.

"Damn straight," Jessica agrees saucily.

They hug again and Quinn decides that she should probably end this goodbye and get going before, one, it gets any later, and two, before she gets more emotional and cries.

Eric and Puck come out of the kitchen and Quinn hugs Eric goodbye as Jessica calls Puck over to her.

"Well it's not like I can get up so get down here," Jessica tells him.

Puck thinks a hug between the two of them is a little odd, but he doesn't want to screw up now and make these people not like him at the last minute ('cause he's been kicking ass at making a good impression…he thinks).

A hug between them is a really weird idea and Jessica knows it will be super awkward. But she wanted to do it for one reason. When Puck lightly hugs her, she whispers, "You hurt her, I hurt you. Got it? And don't make me come through on that promise. Take care of you like I think you really want to."

To Jessica's bewilderment, Puck simply whispers back, "I left a note for you in your guest room." Then he pulls away and says thank you for having him over and for the gift again and offers to carry Quinn's bag to the car.

Quinn hugs her sister one more time and heads out behind Puck with calls of goodbye from everyone.

-o-o-o-

Upstairs? Jessica hoped that Puck knew that she wouldn't be able to go up there and get it herself otherwise the kid wasn't as smart as he had been coming across.

Eric retrieves the note, written on a piece of printer paper (that he took from the room across the hall- their home office) and smiles as he reads it coming down the stairs. He doesn't mention what it says, simply hands it over to his wife because he doesn't want to spoil it for her (he knows she's going to like this).

The note reads simply:

_You should know I love your sister. I've screwed everything up a lot already, but I promise I'm not going to let that happen anymore. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure she ends up happy, no matter what that means. _

_If you want to talk to me about anything going on, my number is: 888-555-2110_

_And my mom wants to meet you or talk to you or whatever. It's unlikely that she wouldn't have called you by the time you read this, but just in case, her number is: 888-555-3365_

_P.S. Don't tell her about any of this. _

Five minutes later, when May calls, Jessica is googling to figure out where the cheapest place in Reading to get some framing done would be.

-o-o-o-

After twelve minutes of driving around and a tad of bickering, Puck and Quinn finally find themselves on the correct freeway to head home. It had been daylight when they got into town and Quinn had been driving then while Puck pretended to sleep, as opposed to now when Puck was driving and they kept seeming to find themselves one-way streets. Finally Quinn just turned on her navigation system despite Puck's protests that he could figure out the way back to the freeway, just give him a minute.

Once on the freeway and officially heading home, Puck tries to call his mom- several times. "The line's still busy," he tells Quinn after his third attempt.

"I'll just text her to let her know we're on our way back then," Quinn decides because after May finishes whatever call she's on it could be pretty late, Quinn doesn't want to keep her up any longer. Plus, she had something she had been meaning to talk to Puck about and she didn't want to give herself the option of interrupting them with a legitimate excuse like calling his mother.

(Puck doesn't mention that he's pretty sure he knows who she's on the phone with. He wants to find out who called who before he goes mentioning it- doesn't want to have to tell Quinn he left his mom's number for her sister at all that way he won't have to answer any questions about it.)

After she's done texting, Quinn puts her phone away and simply sits for a second. Hands clasped in her lap, she tells herself that despite how jittery she feels (enough to make her feel like she doesn't want to go through with this at all), she tells herself that they need this and that things will be easier after she has some clarification.

"I think there are some things we need to talk about," she forces out, her voice higher than it usually is.

"Okay," Puck agrees. He thought she should be sleeping, but if there's something important then he supposes it can wait a few minutes (plus he knows he wouldn't win an argument with her about what she should or shouldn't be doing).

She goes over the words in her head, careful about her choices, and continues, "I need some clarification about…our history."

There's only one thing popping up in his head as to what she could mean so he hurriedly questions, "I thought we talked about that day? The one where everything…went wrong. I thought we agreed that we both said a lot of stuff we didn't mean? I mean, I know I didn't and you know it too right? You know I regret all that?"

"Yes. And I regret all of it too. I treated the situation like it was dire and it wasn't, not yet," Quinn agrees.

"And I should have understood how serious it was for you. You thought you were going to lose your family. Doesn't matter if that made them jerks and that they turned out to be worse, I shouldn't have gotten pissed at you for worrying about it," Puck tells her honestly. He had thought about that day a lot and had known for a while that it would have been better if he had thought before he spoke and acted (which is why he tries to make a point of thinking before anything else now).

"I'm glad we're in agreement that we both screwed up pretty badly that day," Quinn begins, "but that wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about." She keeps her eyes on her hands, which are clasped tightly at the moment, and says in a small voice, "I need to know why you were sexting Santana and you said everything you did after that night we babysat together." She glances at him and asks, "For a while now, it seems like you've made a point of showing me that none of it was true, so why'd you say it?"

Oh. _That_ part of their history- the screw up of his that they hadn't talked about yet. He wanted to explain, he had just been waiting until he thought she was ready to hear all of it. He didn't think she was quite ready for everything, but since she was asking about it he'd have to tell her (except maybe with a tiny bit of editing).

He sighs and confesses, "You know, I felt really good driving home that night we watched those monsters. I thought that I had convinced you to decide to be with me and keep the baby, but I honestly hadn't thought anything through at that point. Like how we'd take care of the baby. What would need to be done for us to survive? What effect becoming a mom now would have on the rest of your life and those college plans you told me about once? And then I got home and…it was like all of a sudden my brain was in overdrive letting me come up with the consequences of what I had done. Like how you could resent me for convincing you to settle down at sixteen. Because, as far as I knew then, I had convinced you and you hadn't had a fair shot to think things out on your own. I told you we could be together and we could be a family, but all I really knew was that I thought I could make money if I had to because I had in the past. But I didn't have any kind of plan past that. All I knew when I started trying to convince you was that you're having my baby, I like you (*this would be the edited bit*), so doesn't that mean we should just deal with this by becoming a family?"

He pauses and tries to give himself a second to make sure that everything else he wants to say is actually stuff he wants to say and not one of those many mistakes he's made before. "I'm not smart," he declares, "I've never been good at making decisions or thinking things through or knowing what to do. I'm trying to be better now, but I hadn't actually noticed that that was screwing up things at the time as it has messed up things for me before. And after I realized that I wasn't giving you a choice and it wouldn't be good to talk you into a future, I kind of continued being an idiot- without realizing it. I texted Santana after I realized all that stuff and I came up with what I said to you in the hall because I- again, very stupidly- thought that if you didn't think I was an option, then you'd figure out what you wanted for yourself. I thought it was the self-less thing to do because I knew that me just trying to get you to do what I wanted, which I hadn't even thought out, was selfish. I thought that if I was a jackass, you'd figure out what you want and I didn't think about how by being a jackass it meant you would probably never want me to be part of that decision again. I figured that out later. Just like I figured out later that thinking that the solution to thinking that I didn't have a good plan for the future I was proposing to you at the moment, was not to abandoned the idea all together on top of the whole jackass thing so you decide for yourself thing, what I should have done was come up with a pan like I have since then."

He glances over at her (a few times, because he does have to keep his eyes on the road too) and promises, "I'm done being stupid though. I swear. I'm telling my mom everything now so she can stop me before I do something stupid and I'm trying to think things out before I do them and I'm getting better at it all. I'm not going to mess up like that again."

So she had her heart broken by him for a second time (though the first time it was both of their faults) because his thinking wasn't logical? She was glad to hear that he knew he was wrong, he hadn't sexted Santana until after he got this stupid idea to make her hate him, and that he had good intentions for her and for them even if he did manage to, as he put it, be really stupid about all of it. "I believe you," she tells him truthfully.

"I'm sorry. For letting you think I had changed my mind, for being an idiot, and for hurting you," he tells her sincerely and keeping his eyes on the road again (looking at her would make him feel more vulnerable than he's comfortable with at the moment).

"I know," she assures him and adds with a small smile, "but thank you for saying it." She lets a beat of silence pass. She doesn't want to say anything about everything he told her. She knew why it happened now, he regretted it and knew it was the wrong thing to do, so now it could be in the past like it technically was. What was important now was the future. With that in mind, she asks, "Now that you've thought things through, how do you want all this to play out?"

(This is another point where he has to edit himself. He knows that they're not at the point where he can say his full response to that question. He's not sure he could say everything even if they were- it was a big deal, being that honest, committing that much. Even if he really, really wants to be able to be that candid.)

"I want to do whatever you need me to do so that all this turns out however would be best for you," he glances at her as he finishes and he can tell she's got a response coming. He knows what it probably is, that this whole thing affects him just as much (they've talked about it before), but she's wrong. He moves on quickly, "We both know this will change your life more than mine. It has the potential to make you lose stuff, but I've never had a future after high school anyway and so far I've actually gotten more than I would have had- I'm on a career path now. So this could change your life for the negative, so whatever will be less bad for you, that's what I want to make happen by doing whatever you need."

She wanted to argue that what they do affects his life just as much as it affects hers, but he had a point, they were coming from different places. So instead, she offers something honest. "You're already doing what I need so that now is less awful," she smiles and adds, "Thank you for taking me to see my sister. It was the best Christmas present ever."

He's pretty sure he's actually blushing, which is really damn embarrassing. Luckily, it's dark so it won't be noticed (he hopes). "I did do really good with that idea, didn't I?" he boasts. "If you weren't pregnant and we had decided to date or date in secret or whatever that day, your gift probably would have been much worse. I'm pretty sure I would have gotten you really trashy lingerie," he jokes (he's thought about how things could have been different if they made different choices on several occasions).

"I would have given you a list that you would have had to stick to if you ever wanted to get within a foot of me again and trashy lingerie wouldn't have been a part of it," she plays along, pretending if things had gone differently.

"There would have been instructions? Damn. That would be easier than thinking you know," he suggests, kind of seriously because her telling him what to do would be really helpful sometimes.

"You're getting good at thinking, I think you should stick with it," she compliments.

He glances at her out of his peripheral vision, a smile on his face he can't help. She's smiling and, God help him, he's starting to truly believe that all of this will actually end the way he wants it to. Which is fantastic because he wants that ending more and more with each passing minute. "Maybe I should teach a class in it. Something for guys- 'how to think through your dealings with girls," he quips.

"Don't get ahead of yourself," she warns playfully.

"Hey, I already helped Artie out once. I kind of consulted Addie, sure, but I totally saved his ass with Tina," Puck points out.

"That's actually not a bad point. There are a lot of guys who could benefit from some help, in glee club alone. Maybe you should all form some kind of support club," she concedes and suggests (and even though she knows they're not having a serious conversation, she's kind of serious- the guys in glee club seem like they could benefit from talking about their problems).

"Guys of Glee Relationship Support Club…that doesn't sound very good. We'd need a catchier name," Puck says, because the name was the most important part of any organization.

"Girl Help for Glee Guys," Quinn tries, though she doesn't like it as she says it.

"Uh, doesn't that exclude Kurt though? And if we're going to be a club for the guys in glee shouldn't it be for him too?" Puck reminds.

"Kurt has more relationships with girls than anyone else. Just because they're not romantic doesn't make them not count. And just because he's gay doesn't make him any less inclined to screw up in a relationship with a girl than any of the rest of you," Quinn argues, "Plus, so far, he's been doing better in his relationships so he could be a valuable asset to your club."

"Okay. But that name still sucks. We'll need something way better than that."

"That could be a topic for your first meeting."

"That and when to have meetings. I vote Saturdays, before we do the musicals at Rachel's thing. Not too early though, more like a brunch thing," Puck says, actually seriously considering the timing (or brunch at least).

Quinn laughs.

"What?" Puck asks, because he was pretty sure he hadn't said anything funny (or at least he hadn't meant to).

"It's just funny that you suggested brunch. I don't remember what we were talking about, but a few weeks ago Kurt declared brunch the gayest meal," Quinn tells him, still laughing as she recalls the conversation.

"How is brunch gay?" Puck questions confused. "The last time I had brunch I ate a Denver omelet and a pulled pork sandwich. What's gay about that? Brunch is just like a way to eat a ton of food, two meals at once, without looking like eating like a fatty is a habit." Seriously, how was combining two of the best meals of the day, breakfast and lunch, gay? (And for that matter, did that mean that brinner was also gay?)

Quinn didn't really follow that logic, but it wasn't like they were having a serious conversation so she didn't need to understand. Instead she shrugs and offers, "Kurt can explain it to you at your first meeting."

"Or before our first meeting so we don't make the mistake of having the gayest meal of the day together," Puck returns.

"Right. You wouldn't want to do that," Quinn says playfully.

This continues for twenty minutes- the playful back-and-fourth about unimportant randomness. Yet it almost ends after three minutes when Puck's joking that they should make Mr. Schue the president of "Help Not Screwing Up With Girls Club" because he clearly was an expert at the screwing up part, Quinn laughs and glances down for the first time since the start of their serious conversation and notices that she's holding Puck's hand. She doesn't remember reaching out for it or him reaching out for hers. She hadn't noticed when he had started driving with one hand. She hadn't noticed anything at all, which terrifies her for a minute. But then he says something else that makes her laugh and she lets herself forget about the fact that she's holding his hand alone in a car at night and that that might mean something.

Forty minutes later, when she's drifting off to sleep (he insisted that they stop messing around and that she tries to go to sleep), she's still holding his hand as she falls asleep quickly feeling safe and _good_.

-o-o-o-

Puck's not surprised when Quinn doesn't wake up the whole ride home. He figures she's got to be tired (he definitely is), so it was good that she could sleep that soundly. (Though, with how much fun they were having just talking while she was awake, he definitely wouldn't have minded the company if she had woken up or been unable to sleep.)

He made good time again thanks to the roads still being mostly empty. Still, Quinn only has about two hours before she has to be at work and unfortunately for Puck, he knows that by the time he gets home, Kelyn will be up, which will be loud so he's going to be lucky if he gets to sleep when he gets home.

Puck pulls into Quinn's driveway and turns off the car with a sigh. They were holding hands when she fell asleep, he knew, but he had needed his hand quite a few times on the long drive so it didn't last. He's not sure exactly when that happened, but he's pretty sure that she started it. His hand had just been there, near her gearshift, and he knows that when they started on their way home her hands had been in her lap so he's pretty sure it was her who grabbed his hand. Even if she didn't though and he had started it, she didn't let go and he took that as a good sign (or at least hoped he could take it that way).

But just because they were holding hands for a while and had had a pretty good thirty-six or so hours together didn't put their relationship in a different place than it was in when they left, not technically. So since they were still just quasi-friends/ two people having a kid in high school, he wakes her by simply calling her name. "Quinn. Quinn. We're back."

She stirs and opens her eyes. She sits her seat up right and glances around outside, confirming that they are indeed back and she hadn't just been dreaming or misheard. "It's snowing," she says, just noticing it.

"Yep. From the look of it, it probably just started before we got back to town," Puck figures by glancing at the amount of snow on the ground.

Quinn looks over at Puck for the first time since waking up. She smiles, and repeats herself because she feels like she needs to, "Thank you again. For everything."

"You're welcome," he says quickly and goes for the door handle and gets out of the car as he changes the topic saying, "You've only got about two hours before your shift starts." He gets out of the car and goes for pulling stuff out of the backseat because last night her thanking him made him blush and he wasn't about to risk her actually seeing that involuntary response of his to her words. So he grabs all of his things and tosses them in his truck and takes a few of her things to carry in for her as well and hopes that the cold makes the heat in his cheeks fade fast.

Quinn's bag is small and it's not at all heavy, but Puck carries it in for her. She can't help but noticing that he seems thoroughly exhausted as he follows her a dozen steps into her house and drops it in the foyer as she asks because she'll just be adding most of the contents to her laundry later and the laundry room was down stairs. He shakes himself awake a little as she tells him this and she smiles because it's kind of adorable. But the fact that he's clearly having trouble staying awake also makes her worry. It's a ten-ish minute drive to his house from here and he's seems like he could drift off in a matter of seconds. She doesn't want to think about what could happen if he fell asleep behind the wheel on his way home. Which is why she finds herself blurting out, "Maybe you should stay here for a while and get some sleep before you get behind the wheel of a car again."

He was definitely having trouble staying awake, but that suggestion perks him up again (for a few minutes at least). He made it all the way here though so there's really no reason for him to crash in the home of the evil-doers. He tells her, "I can make it home, it's not a long drive, I'll be fine."

"I'm not sure you will be and I don't want you to risk it," she says before she realizes how concerned it makes her sound, something that the "no romantic entanglements" advocating part of her will be very worried about later.

Well since she's so worried about him…(he's not too tired to be thoroughly delighted about that). He concedes and offers, "I'll walk then. It's not far."

"It kind of is. It's at least three miles and it's snowing," she argues.

He feels weird about the idea of sleeping in the house of people who he kind of wants to run over with his truck if he ever happens to come across them. Plus, he knows that him being here at all probably wouldn't be cool with her parents no matter what kind of arrangement Quinn has with them and even though he's okay with anything that would bug them, he doesn't want Quinn's relationship with them to get any worse because of anything (else) he does. "Are you sure it'd be okay for me to stay?"

"Yeah. My parents would never know," she answers, realizing why he was kind of fighting the idea in the first place. He just didn't want to mess anything up. "You can sleep in the guest room or on the couch and they wouldn't be able to tell anyone was ever there."

"Alright," he agrees, "I'll sleep until you need to go to work and then I should be good to drive home."

"You can drive home then if you're awake, but if you're sleeping when I leave then I'm not waking you up. You've barely slept in the last forty-eight hours and you did that for me so I'm not going to wake you up. But I'll leave you a key and you can leave whenever you're rested. I think you should try to sleep here as long as you can since it'll be quite here all day and I can't imagine it will be at your house today since Kelyn's there," Quinn tells him. She knows that she wouldn't be able to wake him up before she left, she'd feel too bad about it. So she quickly comes up with an argument for not doing it.

She had a decent point as he had already been thinking that it'd be hard to sleep at home. He feels even weirder about being left alone in her massive, icy-feeling (and kinda creepy, if he's being honest) family house than he does about crashing here for a while. But he figures the chances are good that he'll wake up before she leaves so he doesn't argue. He just says thanks and decides he feels more comfortable about sleeping on the couch than in the guest room (which he learns used to be Jessica's room).

Quinn gets Puck sheets, blankets, and a pillow and hurriedly gets ready for work all the while wishing caffeinated drinks weren't on the list of things she shouldn't have that her doctor gave her. When she leaves for work, Puck is still sleeping soundly on the couch in the living room (the one her parents sat on when they kicked her out and the one she sat on when she blackmailed her way back in). She leaves a key on a table by the door and a note that telling him to help himself to her shelf of the fridge if he wants.

-o-o-o-

Puck is surprised to wake up and realize that it's been a little over six hours since Quinn left for work. He didn't think he'd sleep for so long, he didn't usually without waking up and having to fall back to sleep. But it was a pretty comfy couch, it was dead silent here, and he had been exhausted. He supposes he's glad Quinn suggested he stay because he definitely wouldn't have gotten to sleep so much if he had gone home and it probably would have been very stupid of him to drive as tired as he was.

Puck is even more surprised to realize that the reason he woke up is because someone's knocking on the front door. (For a second there, disoriented as he was when he woke up, he thought that had all been in his head.) He stumbles to the door trying not to make any noise just in case it's one of the Fabray's friends or neighbors who would know that he's not supposed to be here. When he see's who it is through the peephole, he's not as surprised as he should be.

He opens the door and greets, "Mom."

Puck had texted his mom before he laid down on the couch that he was going to stay at Quinn's for a little while because he was pretty tired and it probably wasn't the best idea for him to drive any longer.

"Hi honey. Go get your shoes on and help me with my bags," May greets, letting herself past her son and finding her own way to the kitchen (which is a little hard given the size of the place).

"Bags?" Puck says to himself because his mom had already disappeared into some room (he wasn't sure which one). He does as she said though because it was probably the easiest way of finding out what she was doing here and with bags. After putting on his shoes and getting the bags she had in her car though, he's no less confused because his mom appears to have brought groceries.

He takes them to the kitchen, where he finds his mom unpacking the bag she had brought in, and asks, "What are you doing?"

"It's probably been months since Quinn's had anything nice happen in this house so I thought we could cook her dinner so she'd get at least one more good memory out of living at her parents' house," May tells him as she moves on to unpacking the bags he brought in. She adds, "And by us cooking for her I mean I cook and you go home shower, change, and show back up without spoiling the surprise. Jessica thinks Quinn really likes surprises and you just got to give her one, it's my turn now."

"So you talked to her already," Puck says, knowing that that was probably what his mom had been doing when her line was busy last night.

"I figured you'd probably want to be on your way by eleven, but I didn't want to call over there too late either so at about fifteen minutes till I took a chance and called over there," May explains because without Puck saying they had left, she figured he was probably curious about how she knew it was safe to call, that they hadn't been there anymore. She not about to tell Puck everything she talked about with Quinn's sister, especially since about half of it kind of felt like gossiping with the girl about her son and Quinn (not that she minded). But she does offer, "Jessica's a great girl. I don't know how two such kind girls were raised by such ugly people; Jessica didn't seem to know how that happened either. She liked you though, said you seemed like a good kid. It's just such a shame she can't be here now or help more, she seemed so tortured over that."

Well, apparently she's not very interesting because her son doesn't seem to be listening to her. May swats at her son's arm, getting his attention, and rather than repeating herself she figures what she said wasn't that important and skips to what was important. She tells him, "Go home, grab a shower, and pick up Kelyn from Ashley's house on your way back. I want you back here in an hour and a half so you're back before Quinn gets here."

Puck has a feeling that this probably isn't a good idea. It kind of feels like they're invading to him, but it was usually pointless to argue with his mom and he was still too tired to try besides. So he simply asks which Ashley is Kelyn with and then heads out to do what his mom said. He defies her a little bit though by giving Quinn a pretty big hint that something was up by texting her, "When you get home, remember, I had nothing to do with it and I'm sorry." He figures she'll be expecting way worse and then maybe if she really doesn't want the company, it won't seem so bad in comparison to whatever she's thinking might be going on.

-o-o-o-

When Quinn gets home, she's expecting something expensive and irreplaceable to be broken at the very least and her parents to be home early at the very worst (and to have found Puck there and something unimaginably bad to have gone down). So when she walks in and hears May yelling after Kelyn and then sees Kelyn racing out of the dinning room towards her, it'd be an understatement to say she's surprised.

It turns out Puck was apologizing for his mom inviting herself over and making herself at home. But then she gets a bigger surprise (one Puck apparently wasn't let in on) when they sit down to dinner and May whips out Puck's new laptop, puts it at the end of the table, and there's her sister and Eric eating dinner in their house (which they're seeing thanks to May's new Skype account- something Jessica told her to sign up for).

Somehow, throughout the very enjoyable night, Quinn never gets anyone to tell her how exactly May and Jessica suddenly seem to know each other. Sure Jess kept asking for her number, as well as everyone else's that she's been friends with these days, but she had honestly forgot about giving her any of them while they were busy catching up in person for the first time in several months.

It's a really good night though. Quinn can't remember the last time she smiled or laughed so much in this house.

When it's time to say goodnight it's pretty easy to sign off with her sister. She usually had to do it a few times a day for a couple of months now, she was pretty used to it. What's surprisingly hard is saying goodbye to the people who were actually there. The people who showed up and gave her a nice night for absolutely no other reason besides the fact that they wanted to. Plus, with them leaving, she realizes she's going to be alone for the first time in a couple of days (she had almost gotten used to not being alone like she had been so much of her life). So she thanks them all and hugs them all goodbye. (And she tries not to notice that she hugs Puck longer then May and Kelyn…combined.)

As she's trying to fall asleep a few hours later, feeling like the house is suddenly woefully big and empty, she decides that she'll take May and Jessica up on a suggestion they made during dinner. Tomorrow morning, after church and before work, she's going to text some of the girls and see if any one wants to hang out. She was tired of spending so much time alone, and it was a little ridiculous that she still did spend so much time on her own now that she had real friends to spend time with.

-o-o-o-

(What Quinn or Puck or anyone knows is that May didn't just invite herself over to give Quinn a good night in her childhood home. She did want to do that, but it was also a convenient way to get inside. From things that both Quinn and Jessica had told her, she didn't think it sounded like Mrs. Fabray would be cutting all ties with her daughter if she didn't think she had to. So May felt it was her duty to find a way to reach out without anyone knowing- because she didn't want to have to tell Quinn or Jessica that their mother wasn't interested in her offer.

So after she's sent Puck home and she's alone in the house, May does some snooping to try and figure out the best place to leave the note she's brought (eventually she settles on one of the kitchen drawers- she figures it's less intrusive). In the note, she tries not to be judgmental even if she doesn't understand Quinn's parents or agree with them at all. But she knows people make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes affect their children. She's certainly been guilty of that and she can't hold it against Mrs. Fabray if she's done the same, but she wants to give her an opportunity to start turning things around. So she writes a note, stating her name, letting Mrs. Fabray know she cares about Quinn and she's looking out for her, and with contact information just in case Mrs. Fabray would like to start getting out from under her husbands thumb and start doing the right thing by her daughter. As much as she doesn't think she'll ever like Quinn's mother, she hopes to hear from her.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn's Sunday is filled with church, work, and then dinner at her house with Mercedes and Tina. Kurt doesn't make it because he's visiting his grandma and Rachel's dads had surprised her with a trip to Columbus to see some Broadway musical that was in town for the weekend (Rachel had been so excited, talking so quickly, that Quinn had completely missed the name).

On Monday she works again and so does Puck, but thanks to Mercedes and Tina prodding her about what she's going to get Puck as a thank you for his really awesome Christmas gift, she had finally come up with something so she asks him to stop by on his way home.

"You really didn't have to get me anything," Puck says as he takes the envelope she holding out to him.

"Yes I did," she tells him softly, earnestly.

He opens the envelope, expecting to find a gift card of some sort, and perplexed to pull out what looks like a ticket that reads 1968 and has Cleveland and Dallas and the NFL on it.

She can tell he has no idea what she's given him, so she explains, "It's a ticket to the 1968 NFL playoff between Cleveland and Dallas. Cleveland won apparently- 31 to 20." Then she smiles and tells him the part she thought he'd like best, "It's my dads. Or it was. I found it in his giant case of memorabilia and collectors items. It was hidden under a few other things. He'll never miss it. I tried to find out how much it's worth and I'm not exactly sure, but I think you should get at least five hundred for it."

His eyes bulging, he lets out a low whistle, "Holy Crap! Five hundred? That's more than my mom spent on my laptop." This is a really nice gift, but he's trying to be the guy who does the right thing and even though he really doesn't want to be that guy right now, he forces himself to be and says, "I can't accept this though. It's too much."

"No, it's really not," she asserts honestly and hopes that he knows that she knows how much he's done for her lately and how much she appreciates everything (him). She smiles and tries to convince him (because she can see that he's wavering), "With this, you can enjoy the fact that you have something of my dad's for a while and then sell it for a really nice amount of money. I know you've felt bad about not contributing, even though so far there hasn't been anything to contribute to, but now you'll have something you could use if anything comes up before you get your first pay check."

Okay, she had some good points. It would be pretty sweet to have something of her dad's; it'd be kind of like screwing that guy over and he does really want to do that and whole lot worse to him. And she had a point about the money. He could use it and she could probably really use it so maybe the smart thing to do would be to accept it. Plus she's being all really nice and he doesn't want to screw that up so he concedes, "Good points. Thanks for the kick ass gift."

"You're welcome" she responds politely (except that it sounded a little flirty in her head…and hopefully only in her head).

They stand awkwardly in her foyer for a few beats of silence before he finally says, "I should probably get home. Ma' gets pissed when I'm late for dinner." Before he can think it through, he offers, "Do you wanna come over? Join us for dinner and hang out?"

"I'd like to," she begins, "but I already have plans. I called Rachel to see if she wanted to hang out tonight since she couldn't yesterday and one of her dads answered and talked me into coming over to their house for dinner."

"Oh," he says, completely unable to hide his disappointment. He hopes he sounds like he means it when he says, "Have a good night then."

He leaves and it's a little awkward, but calls later that night and they're back to normal within seconds.

Tuesday Quinn's parents come home and she's not surprised to realize that having them back doesn't feel that different from not having them there (except that she's less comfortable hanging out anywhere besides her room).

Wednesday and Thursday were filled with work and then coming home to be alone because she was simply too tired to hang out with anyone and she knew she'd have a long night Friday so she wanted to be rested.

Friday goes as she expected it to (for the first part of the day at least). She works only from the morning until mid afternoon and the manager comes by to wish her well and says her last check will be in the mail. She hoped she'd get asked to stay, but realistically she knew that it was a temporary job until the end of the month (today, December 31st) so she knew it would most likely be over today.

She takes a nap after she gets home and bakes some cookies from dough she made the previous day to take with her to Artie's. Finally, around seven thirty, she leaves for Artie's party- completely unaware that the night isn't going to go at all like she thought it would.

-o-o-o-

Puck gets a little worried when he pulls up to Artie's house because he's able to park right in front. So either he's early (though he thought he was late) or he got the address wrong and he's at the wrong house. He assumes it will be the latter but when he knocks on the door lo and behold Artie answers.

"Puck," Artie greets, a little thrown but he covers it well as he continues, "Happy New Year."

"Am I the first one here? I thought it started at seven?" Puck ask, confused about the fact that it seems completely silent in Artie's house and wasn't this supposed to be a party?

"I told everyone eight actually, but you're not the first one here. Tina came early to help out with some stuff and to put out the food her dad sent over- ribs and chicken. Looked good," Artie says as he waves Puck in and leads him through the living room down and kitchen down to the basement.

"Whoa," Puck says in astonishment when he gets to the bottom of the ramp behind Artie.

"I told everyone, my basement is da bomb," Artie says enthusiastically.

"And I told you to stop using that phrase. 'Da bomb' is so ten years ago," Tina says from a table set up with food as she placed an enormous platter of ribs on it. "Hi Puck," she greets noticing that he had followed Artie in (and decides not to comment on how he's thirty minutes early).

Of course the next person who's early is Rachel, which is how he ends up hearing her prattle on about some musical she saw for what feels like hours (and is actually only five minutes). What's really annoying about it is that she keeps mentioning words he's interested in like "nudity" and "sex" but then she follows it up with long weird names and practically reciting all the lyrics from every song. So when Kurt arrives he tells Rachel that he bets Kurt would want to hear all about Spring…whatever. Thankfully, she takes the bait.

It's as he's finally coming back to the present after several minutes of tuning her out that he notices something really awesome. When he walked in, Puck noticed the couches, the mock stage that clearly had a karaoke machine set up on it, the popcorn machine, the cotton candy machine, the table set up with food, the giant TV, and the speakers set up around the room. What he had failed to notice though, along the wall that the ramp entrance had been on, was all of the musical instruments- including four guitars (two electric, two acoustic).

As he's ogling them, he barely notices as Artie rolls by behind him and says, "You're welcome to play anything you want."

The first thing that distracts him from Artie's impressive collection is Finn thunderously coming down the ramp, exclaiming, "Awesome!" upon first site of it, quickly followed by, "Is that a cotton candy machine?" which he promptly races to.

As he was debating whether or not he should pick up and play any of Artie's guitars (he wouldn't want to accidentally break one, he'd never be able to pay the guy back for it-not that it was that likely) when he heard from beside him, "I didn't know basements could be this cool. We should totally have all of our glee club meetings here from now on."

Puck is surprised to realize its Finn beside him…and talking to him. Although with the way Finn is eyeing the drum kit, he's not totally sure Finn even realizes who he's talking to. He's not going to miss out on this opportunity (not going to run with it exactly either- probably not the right time for that), so he says, "Word. We'll all have to start convincing Mr. Schue on Monday."

Finn stands there silently for a few beats until he finally, hesitantly, suggests, "Do you think Artie would mind if we….like, tried out his gear?"

"No, he told me we could play anything we want," Puck says, noticing the "we" Finn had used, but not sure if he should be reading anything in to it. Maybe the guy just didn't want to be the only one playing an instrument and besides Artie none of the other people here could play (which at the moment only consisted of Tina, Kurt, Rachel, and Mercedes).

"Sweet!" Finn exclaims and rushes to stool of the drum kit.

Puck picks up a guitar, assuming that the "we" Finn used was intentional, and realizes that Finn seems to be in a particularly good mood. Which is a little odd because he thought that if Finn was in a good mood it would have something to do with him and Rachel and he hadn't even talked to Rachel since he got there (he was pretty sure).

Once he had a guitar strapped on and Finn was twirling drum sticks in his fingers, he asks, "What should we play?"

Puck's not sure if his honest answer is something he should be saying to Finn, but he figures their friendship probably couldn't be in any worse of a place so he tells him, "Uh, something Rachel doesn't know so she can't start singing along."

Finn nods in agreement and suggests, "Clapton?"

They start playing "Sunshine of Your Love."

When they finally get to the part where someone would normally start singing, they're stunned when Rachel, who had been talking to Mercedes and Tina, starts singing, "It's gettin' near dawn, when lights close their tired eyes. I'll soon be with you my love, to give you my dawn surprise. I'll be with you darling soon, I'll be with you when the stars start falling."

Puck and Finn exchange shocked looks (who would have guessed that Rachel knew the lyrics to a Cream/Eric Clapton song?), but keep playing as Rachel comes over and joins them. Artie brings Rachel a microphone and picks up a base and joins in as well.

Shockingly, Rachel knew the whole song and seemed to have fun singing it. And not surprisingly she sang it very well. After it's over, she offers by way of explanation, "I always say that I can sing anything, so my dads suggested to me a while ago that I should actually be able to sing _anything_ if I was going to go around saying that. So I learned a ton of songs from every decade, in every genre- except metal."

"So if we were to…request a song, you'd probably know it?" Mercedes asks, an idea clearly having sparked in her head.

"Yes," Rachel answers confidently.

Mercedes glances at Kurt, confirming that this was indeed a fun idea, and continues, "Are you guys up for a challenge?"

This is how they end up playing a newly invented game where someone names a song and Rachel is challenged to sing it and Finn, Puck, and Artie are challenged to play it.

The first song suggestion is made by Tina- "Golden Years," by David Bowie. She went with a song that she knew that Artie would know so at least he wouldn't have to struggle with the first song. Though it turned out no one did as Puck and Finn easily follow along and, surprising everyone again, Rachel knows all the lyrics.

This game was how Puck ends up playing "Sway" by the Perishers when Quinn arrives. She reaches the end of the ramp and enters the basement just as they were getting to the chorus for the first time as Rachel began, "I don't wanna hurt you, I don't wanna make you sway." It was the third song they were challenged with and it was suggested by Mike who arrived with Matt during the second song ("Cryin'" by Aerosmith- suggested by Kurt to throw the boys one he thought would be easy for them- which it was- and to possibly throw Rachel off because he didn't think she'd know that much classic rock- though she killed it).

Once again, just like the two songs before it, the boys managed to pull off playing "Sway" though none of them were particularly familiar with it and though things were changed up a bit with Artie trading his guitar for the keyboard set he had. Rachel knew all the lyrics (or at least if she flubbed any no one noticed).

After they finish, the game they were playing is explained again for the new comers that had arrived during the song (Quinn and, to everyone's surprise, Santana and Brittany, who everyone thought would skip this for a better party). As Quinn is trying to come up with a song they'd all know (and considering suggesting a Neil Diamond song just because), Santana gets more than a glint of mischief in her eye and quickly shouts out, "Heart, "Crazy on You."

For the people in the room who are familiar with the song, which many of them are, they know what Santana is doing and completely understand why Puck is now glaring at her.

Puck has to refrain himself from calling Santana a bitch (though she was _so _being one at the moment) because he has a feeling that wouldn't go over well with at least the rest of the ladies there even if he was completely justified. Instead, he takes a deep breath and dives in to the song.

He's tried playing this song before. The start of it was especially known as being difficult so he had taken on the challenge before even though he really didn't like Heart. However, in the few times he attempted it, he never got it exactly right. This time though, he's flawless, which earns cheers from the rest of the club as soon as he finishes the intro (even Finn, he notices). Then he continues to play the rest and they all find out that Rachel knows the lyrics to this song too.

It was getting a little annoying that Rachel had yet to mess up (though the boys had all managed to play every song, it was mostly by ear for them so there were some small flubs) so no one really blames Mercedes when she threw, "Usher- "OMG," at Rachel.

Artie knows the song and even sings along with parts, but Puck and Finn have to play by ear again. Mercedes and almost everyone else are impressed that Rachel knows all the lyrics and once again performs the hell out of the song even though they all knew it wasn't a genre she usually/ever enjoyed. They enjoy her rendition of it so much that most lost their annoyance at the fact that she was totally kicking ass at this "game" they were playing and had proven infallible.

Everyone except Santana, naturally. Santana is still annoyed that Rachel keeps doing so well so she suggestes "La Bamba" (originally by Ritchie Valens, though she doesn't know that).

"I'm out," Puck quickly declares.

"Me too," Finn adds. Neither of them having no idea what the song was.

Artie doesn't say anything. He had heard the song, but he wasn't sure he could pick it up alone.

Rachel seems to be hesitant, but as soon as Santana smiles thinking she's victorious, Rachel smiles and begins singing confidently (acapella), "Para bailar la bamba, para bailar la bamba se necesita una poca de gracia." She sings the whole song perfectly and enthusiastically. About half way through Artie picks up an acoustic guitar and manages to find the rhythm.

When she finishes Rachel smartly asks, "Are there any more requests?"

Santana is peeved that Rachel managed to know the lyrics to every song challenged to her so far. She wants to keep throwing songs out at her, but Artie intervenes saying, "I think we should declare Rachel awesome for having memorized the lyrics to so many songs and give her a break from singing for now and let the rest of have a chance because I have…karaoke!" He takes off his guitar and rolls toward the other side of the room where he has a mock stage set up as he asks, "Who wants to go first?"

Tina, Mercedes, and Kurt all yell "Me!" but Artie lets Tina go first, which Kurt and Mercedes both claim as favoritism.

"Now this first set list I programmed the machine to play off is Christmas music because I …_love_ Christmas music," Artie tells everyone, eliciting a groan from many.

As Tina began singing "River" by Joni Mitchell, Puck notices that Quinn is talking to Kurt and Mercedes and, not wanting to look like he's waiting around to talk to her because he hadn't talked to her all day and was kind of anxious to, he wanders over to Mike and Matt who were loading up plates with food and joins them in eating and watching the karaoke from one of the couches as they re-cap their winter breaks in between songs.

Kurt sings "The Grinch," Mercedes "What Child is This," and Artie "Jingle Bell Rock." With some prodding from Rachel, Finn decides to sing and the song randomly chosen for him is "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer." Rachel voices her objection to the fact that Christmas music is the current selection when it's a religious holiday and a faith that not everyone present shares. However, she then goes on to sing "The Christmas Song."

Santana refuses to sing anything until the selection is changed and Puck continues to eat so no one asks him. And if they do, he's planning on reminding them that he's Jewish, and unlike Rachel, therefore not willing to sing Christmas songs (though really, he just doesn't like Christmas music).

Though he supposes there's someone there that he couldn't refuse if she were to ask and, thinking of her, he seeks her out and notices that Rachel and Mercedes seem to be trying to get her to sing. A minute later she's on the mock stage in front of the karaoke machine's screen- there's really no saying no to Rachel.

When the song, again randomly chosen thanks to the way Artie set up his playlist, pops up on the screen she laughs and says, "Of course this is the song I get."

Everyone's a little confused until the song starts, and some don't get it until they hear the lyrics. Her song is "Santa Baby." She rolls her eyes at the line "Been an awfully good girl" and "been an angel all year" and wants to laugh at the come hither tone of the song.

Puck could tell she felt awkward singing a song that had a bit of a seductive implication to it. He wonders if she would have if she wasn't currently pregnant. He feels like that despite her standing up to Sue and her parents and stuff, she doesn't seem as confident as she used to be. He supposes that makes sense, he just wishes that it wasn't yet another thing that had to change for her. At least with the encouragement of the glee club she seemed to get more comfortable as the song went on. Maybe in time she'd seem like she actually felt comfortable in her own skin.

After she's done and everyone is begging Artie to change whatever he had set up so that the only songs that would come up on the karaoke machine were Christmas songs, Puck decides to stop waiting to do what everyone in the whole room probably knew he wanted to do. He approaches Quinn as Rachel is critiquing her singing. She's at least doing it in a friendlier way than she used to- cushioning the "suggestions" with compliments it sounded like.

"Little Saint Nick" by the Beach Boys starts playing in the background- Brittany singing it because while everyone else may have wanted the Christmas music to stop, she didn't want it to and she hadn't gotten to sing yet besides.

"Hey," Puck greets both girls.

"Puck," Rachel begins, "didn't Quinn do a lovely job with the song? Didn't you just _love _her performance?" Rachel is clearly fishing. Though for what, Puck doesn't know.

"Yeah," he answers, "it was as good as a Christmas song could be."

"You don't like Christmas music?" Rachel asks, to both Quinn and Puck's surprise. "I'm as devoutly Jewish as the next girl, but even I like Christmas music. Don't you find the spirit of it infectious?"

"No," he returns.

Rachel's eyes narrow at him and she declares before marching away, "I'm going to go see what other Christmas songs Artie has and see if I can pick one out instead of having one chosen for me. And I _will _make you like whatever Christmas song I sing."

"And it seemed like we were so close to being done with the Christmas music," Quinn remarks as they watch her go.

"Maybe Artie won't let her sing again. She's already done plenty of singing tonight," Puck says and hopes he's right.

"Yeah, you were all really good," she compliments.

"Thanks," he says, praying that such a simple statement that's not even about just him doesn't make him blush.

"How did you guys end up doing that?" she asks and she hopes it doesn't seem like she's doing what she's doing in asking because what she really wants to know is about Finn.

He knows it seemed a little odd that Finn was playing with him even though Finn was the only one here who played drums so that hole needed to be filled by someone. And he knows that that definitely caught her attention given the history they both have with him. So even though he could just say something simple like telling her the claim Rachel made, he starts at the beginning, "I was over there looking at Artie's guitars and Finn came up and was looking at all of the instruments and he asked if we could use them. Artie had already told me we were welcome to so I told him that and he sat down behind the drum kit and asked what we should play. We didn't think Rachel would join in because we didn't expect her to know all the lyrics to a Clapton song, but after she did that and claimed she knew the lyrics to a ton of different songs, everyone kept telling us to play stuff after that."

Quinn wasn't sure what to think of that.

Guessing what her slightly wide eyes meant, Puck offers, "Yeah it surprised me too- that he actually talked to me and was willing to play something with just me."

"I'd like to hope that that means that he's starting to forgive us," she smiles, a bit sadly, "he seemed less tense around me too. But maybe he's just trying to be that way for tonight- it is a party after all."

"One night is better than never," he considers.

"True," she agrees and wonders if he realizes that his words could have double meaning, especially for them.

(He didn't notice the alternative implication of his words.)

"Are you going to sing?" she asks because she honestly didn't know- it seemed like lately he could be very unexpected so she was left not knowing what to expect from him ever.

"I kinda hate just the idea of karaoke," Puck admits, "but if they change the music to normal stuff I might do it anyway. Being the one person that doesn't do it would be lame."

"And you can't do anything lame," she teases.

"Nope, never," he agrees.

"Q, come dance," Kurt calls from one of the clear areas next to the couches where he was dancing with Mercedes, Tina, Brittany, Mike, and Matt as Artie enthusiastically sang what he had declared the last Christmas song they'd do, "Last Christmas."

She hesitates, so Puck tells her, "I'm gonna go get more of those ribs before they disappear."

Ribs. Hmm. That actually sounds like a good idea to her now and it has nothing to do with the fact that he was going to get ribs. But she goes to dance with Kurt and the others instead (Kurt would probably keep calling her over anyway).

Puck gets a rib since that was what he said he was going to do. Nearly everyone is dancing and two that aren't- Finn and Rachel- are at the cotton candy machine. Rachel is clearly trying to help Finn figure out how it worked.

Santana is also not dancing but instead she's spiking her soda with something from her purse (Jack? He thinks). He goes over to her and tells her, "That was a pretty mean song choice earlier."

"You played it fine," she brushes it off and returns, "Besides, in case you haven't noticed, I'm mad at you."

He hadn't noticed. "What for?" he's pretty sure he didn't do anything.

"You never talked to Mario like you said you would," she says as if it should have been obvious.

He rolls his eyes, but he knows she's technically right, that he did say that, so he offers, "Sorry." Though that was going to be one super awkward conversation so he's not actually that sorry and moves on pointing out, "You could have just asked him out though. The chances of any guy saying no to you really aren't that good."

"Finn did. And you would," she points out. Not that she was really interested in either one of them, but being turned down didn't feel good.

"Didn't Britt mention that you two are staying at her parent-less house tonight?" he asks, because seriously, they seemed to fool around with each other a lot. And Santana wasn't exactly known for keeping the same person around to do that with for very long and as far as he knew Britt had far out lasted them all. That seemed like something important.

"So?" Santana responds with steely glare.

Okay, apparently she didn't want to talk about it.

He thinks that she possibly could have gone on to say or do something to him that would probably be painful, but luckily she's distracted from the anger he apparently brought out in her with his topic by the fact that Artie changes the playlist he had the karaoke machine set to finally and it would now randomly select normal songs. Santana shoves her way to be the next person to sing. (She bogarts the mic on the karaoke machine for the next three songs and finally gives it up when she gets one she really doesn't like- Frank Sinatra, "Witchcraft.")

Artie points out his dart board, special basketball/hoop shooting game (instead of being intended for someone to play while standing, it was designed for someone sitting), and his similarly altered foosball table and everyone starts having a lot more fun than they were having just singing. Though people continue to rotate through using the karaoke machine at their desire.

(Puck challenges Quinn at the basketball game and in the end is disgruntled to realize that she's not just better than him at baseball. He's got to stop challenging her in sports, it's getting embarrassing.

Though having her on his side did help him kick ass at foosball.)

The fact that Artie still had the machine set to pick songs for people at random led to some fun situations as well. Such as Finn singing "I'm a Slave For You," and Brittany singing "Who Let the Dog's Out?" Not to mention Mike and Matt's dance heavy rendition of "Waterfalls" by TLC.

Quinn gets luckier the next time she decides to sing with Kurt and they get "Turning Japanese."

Puck, after just about everyone asking him when he was going to take a turn with the karaoke machine, decides to finally sing (and he'd been there for nearly three hours by the time he did). He does a double take when he sees what song pops up on the machine for him. "Is it not random anymore?" he asks the room at large.

"No, it still is," Artie assures.

"What'd you get?" Mike asks, his curiosity piqued.

Before Puck can answer, the song starts. "When I wake up, well I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who wakes up next to you," he begrudgingly sings.

He was right before, it's not the same without the accent, but the second it starts playing Quinn breaks out into a brilliant smile anyway. She blushes when he sings the chorus for the first time ("but I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, just to be the man who walks a thousand miles to fall down at your door") because he's looking at her. Then her blush continues to get worse and worse for the rest of the song because everyone's eyes keep going to her like they all figured out that the reason he was struck by this song was because it had some kind of secret meaning between them. (Which wasn't hard to figure out considering his pre-song question and the way he kept looking at her-not that she was complaining.) Though Quinn finds all thoughts of everyone else in the room disappearing in a second as her eyes widen in realization.

After he's done, Puck declares, "And that's enough karaoke for me." Considering the crappy luck he had with what song he got, he figured he's definitely out.

While Puck gets everyone telling him how they thought he did with the song and/or trying to get him to do another, Quinn's anxiously waiting for him to separate from the crowd.

Not wanting to wait, she heads toward the ramp upstairs and hopes she can catch his attention to wave him over. It takes three minutes that feel oh so long, but his eyes finally find hers and she gives a "come here" wave before turning and heading up the ramp.

Puck follows quickly and a little worried because this seemed kind of odd.

Once up the ramp, Puck heads through the kitchen and finds Quinn in the living room. "What's going on? Is something wrong?" he asks concerned as he approaches.

"No. No. Nothing's wrong," she says with a smile and as soon as he's close she grabs his hand and places his palm flat on her stomach and waits for him to figure it out.

It only takes a second before his eyes widen in surprise and he realizes, "She's kicking." Then after a second he adds, "Holy crap is she kicking."

"Yeah," Quinn confirms gleefully. "I keep reading that movement is hard to distinguish the first time you're pregnant so I figured the first time I'd feel her would be a kick, but I've also read a kick wouldn't happen until about week twenty and I'm only in week seventeen. But then while you were singing she kicked and she keeps kicking." Quinn keeps moving her hands around different places to feel the kicking, moving around Puck's firmly planted hand.

"Wow," he says softly, not even noticing he said it or even thought it.

"Yeah," she agrees just as softly.

The baby kicks directly where Puck has his hand and he snaps it away quickly, like he had been shocked, but puts his hand right back where it was as he smiles and meets Quinn's eyes for the first time since she dragged his hand to her stomach.

They stay like that-his hand on her stomach, her hands next to his, feeling the baby kick as his eyes stay with hers. There is a palpable intimacy to the moment and they both know it as they stand there. Feeling the baby they created kick for the first time as they're alone in a dark room (save for the lights from the still-present Christmas tree). It is the kind of moment that she knows she shouldn't be in with him right now and would usually run from. It was the kind of moment he knows she doesn't want right now and would usually try to give them both some kind of out for it. Yet, here they were, just standing, feeling.

-o-o-o-

Meanwhile, downstairs, there was a small crisis.

"All the chips are gone," Tina alerts Artie.

"There are more upstairs," he says and turns his chair around and heading for the ramp. He had just gotten back over to the karaoke area too and now he was heading right back in the opposite direction.

"I can get them," Finn says, having overheard the conversation from his place behind the couches. He was closer anyway. "It's no problem," he assures and heads for the stairs so Artie has no choice but to agree. He knew Artie could get them, but he just felt like doing something nice.

"Thanks. They're on the counter," Artie calls.

Finn reaches the kitchen, which the ramp lead to directly, and he's about to turn on the lights when he notices the chips on the counter across the kitchen. When he gets to them though, he notices something out of the corner of his eye and it wasn't just the Christmas tree. He's surprised when he turns his head and sees what it is. Puck and Quinn- his hand on her stomach. He hadn't noticed that they weren't down stairs. He spends a few seconds just looking at them- smiling and staring at each other. Then he carefully picks up the bags of chips and heads back down the ramp as quietly as possible.

There's something he's really got to do. So he drops the chips off at the table the last bags had been on and heads for Rachel.

Unfortunately, in the few large strides he takes before he gets to her, Artie starts talking to everyone from his mock stage, "Tina and I wanted to play something special for you guys. We thought about doing it in glee club, but it's not something we can consider for regional's probably so it doesn't matter there. But I was," he pauses and looks at Tina beside him, "I was an idiot around when we got to do duets and that meant I didn't get to do one with Tina and I've really wanted to since day one of glee club so we finally agreed on a song and we'd like to play it for you."

As Artie and Tina exchange smiles, Finn taps Rachel's shoulder and says urgently, "I have to talk to you." He grabs her hand, not waiting for her to respond, and starts pulling her toward the ramp.

"But Artie and Tina are just about to play something and I have to be here to let them know whether or not it's good. Plus it's almost midnight and Artie was going to turn the TV to whatever station shows the ball dropping in Time Square," Rachel rambles.

"Shhh," Finn hushes as they reach the top of the ramp.

Rachel balks. That was _so _rude! And really curious. What in the world was Finn doing and why did he need her? And was that "Make You Feel My Love" she could hear Artie playing and Tina singing? These and many more questions race through Rachel's head as Finn pulls her a little zig-zag through the kitchen and to the back door. He's taking her outside? But it's snowing and they don't have their coats.

This better be good or she's going to be so mad with him.

-o-o-o-

The sound of a door shutting, clearly somewhere upstairs and not in the basement, startles both Puck and Quinn out of the silent moment they had been having for a couple of minutes now.

They both look away, but they don't remove their hands from her stomach even if the baby's kicking has died down.

Straining just a little, they both realize that not only can the music from the basement be heard up here, but they know the song.

_When the evening shadows and the stars appear _

_And there is no one there to dry your tears_

"I didn't have anything to do with it," Puck says because how poorly the last time he referenced a song from their days at Foster's is still ingrained in his mind.

"I'm sure," she tells him, believing him, "Tina and Artie are both big Adele fans and she covered this song." She admits fondly with a small smile, "I bought that version and the original last spring. I listened to them more than any other song for a while."

_I could hold you for a million years_

_To make you feel my love_

He smiles. He knows he's about to say something cheesy that around this time last year he would have beat himself up for even thinking. But his world was a different place than it had ever been before and he's learned that in this new world, sometimes cheesy could have good results. So he asks with a smirk, "You wanna dance?"

_I know you haven't made your mind up yet_

_But I would never do you wrong_

"Seriously?" she asks, eyebrow raised. She wouldn't have expected that from him, "Isn't slow dancing alone up here to music we can barely hear far too lame for you to do?" She's only teasing, her smile is proof of that.

"When are you gonna learn? If I do something, it's instantly not lame. I'm overflowing with coolness so me doing something lame- impossible," he responds as he puts his hands on her waist and she puts hers on his shoulders.

_I've known from the moment that we met_

_No doubt in my mind where you belong_

(The way he looks at here, in this moment, makes her bite her lip and look away.

She's feeling awfully tempted to do things she convinced herself wouldn't be smart.)

_I'd go hungry I'd go black and blue_

_I'd go crawling down the avenue_

_No there's nothing that I wouldn't do_

_To make you feel my love_

To draw her attention away from the way he looks at her, the fact that they're alone, and the moment they had just shared over feeling the daughter they may never get to know kick, Quinn comments looking away from him and toward the kitchen and the door to the basement, "They're really good."

"Yeah," he agrees, "I didn't think I'd like anyone but Dylan doing this song, but they're alright." He laughs suddenly and explains to her confused expression, "I could feel her kick you just then."

She blushes a little, because they were indeed close enough that he could feel when the baby kicked her. And yet, despite knowing it was not something she thought was smart, she doesn't try to get any further away from him.

_The storms are raging on the rolling sea_

_And on the highway of regret _

_Though winds of change are blowing wild and free_

_You ain't seen nothing yet_

(He's humming along with the end of the song quietly, just like the day he played it at Foster's.

If she could think of anything right now, she'd realize that she doesn't want the song to end.)

_I could make you happy make your dreams come true_

_Nothing that I wouldn't do_

_Go to the ends of the earth for you_

_To make you feel my love_

_To make you feel my love_

The music stops and they can hear cheering from the basement. They stop their slow swaying, but they don't move out of each other's space.

The thing is, all night she's been having trouble remembering not only why the things she decided would be stupid and wrong for her now are stupid or wrong or even that those thoughts ever existed in her head to begin with. If she's being honest with herself, she knows that it hasn't just been tonight that she's been forgetful either. Lately, it's been every day, every day she's been finding it difficult to be as practical and realistic as she knows she needs to be.

And that's what she's going to blame her next act on. The fact that her memory has skewed her judgment because lately he's given her so many good memories that it's hard to remember the bad. Not to mention she's alone with him in a dark room after an extremely intimate moment and that alone feels…tempting. So she leans forward and up, closing the small space between them, and brushes her lips with his ever so quickly.

As soon as she opens her eyes her reason comes flooding back to her and hits her with such force that it settles her feet back on the ground. But before she can take a step back, he manages to pull her even closer to him and kisses her. He kisses her like he's been longing desperately for this moment for seventeen weeks and like it's the only thing in the world he wants. She feels similarly, so the reason that had come flooding back, rushes right out of her again and she hangs on tightly to him and kisses him back.

When midnight passes four minutes later, they're still wrapped up in each other.

(Here's something you should know: By school on Monday two people who were away from everyone else at the party at midnight will be blissfully happy and together. And it won't be them.)

* * *

**A/N: I hope you enjoyed the second half of the chapter!**

**Next chapter title:** _With every step I get closer, I'm still stuck one step behind_ from "As Much As You Lead" by Lex Land. There's a small chance this will not be the title. It's the one I've been planning on for the next chapter, but I have this feeling that I found something better and I wrote it down somewhere, but I can't find it.

When can you expect the next chapter? Well, I've obviously been really, really bad at predicting that. I will warn you though that I will be traveling across the country in less than a week and I won't likely get much writing done while I'm gone. I do, however, believe that the next chapter will be less massive- closer to the length of the early chapters- and therefore might be posted much quicker than this last update took me.

If you're getting antsy for something Quick to read though, I know there's plenty of wonderful Quick authors on here and I do also have a oneshot I posted not too long ago that you could always check out (just sayin').

**Please, please, please, be kind enough to REVIEW! **

**And have a wonderful week wonderful readers! **


	19. Chapter 16

**A/N:** Whew. I just made it in updating in under two months. I know, two months is a long time, but considering I only got to start writing this chapter around the start of June and how long it is, I think the fact that I'm updating today is a pretty decent accomplishment. I'm still sorry that it took me two months though. The month of May was a bit crazy for me as, on top of a few other things, I was kept busy applying for a whole slew of jobs. Which was a very welcome change considering how long I've been looking for a teaching job.

**Thank you to all of you who have stuck with this story, reviewed faithfully, and sent me messages asking about the next update. I really appreciate all of your support and continued dedication to this story:)**

At the end of the last chapter I mentioned that I might dabble in some other fandoms in the near future and several of you seemed to like that idea, which is why I'm sorry to say that I've been encountering writers block on everything except this so seeing stuff from me for other fandoms isn't looking like it'll happen any time soon.

**Warning:** There's a good chance that most of this chapter will leave you frustrated and possibly wanting to hurt me. But keep reading and I promise it'll all pay off (and if you don't feel like it's paid off at the end of the chapter know that there is more goodness to come).

**I hope you enjoy the chapter!**

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**Cheated Hearts**

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**XVI. **_**With every step I get closer, I'm still stuck one step behind**_

(Here's something you should know: Even though life has forced Quinn to change in a lot of ways, old habits are old habits and oh so easy to give into.)

Quinn has been avoiding Puck for nearly two weeks. Because nearly two weeks ago she had a lapse in coherent thought and kissed him as the New Year arrived. After several minutes of doing that, she grabbed her coat and fled. A simple "I have to go," and "I'm sorry," muttered to him in her haste to get as far away from the mistake she just made as possible. All thoughts of everyone else or what they would think or if they would worry were completely lost on her. All she wanted to do was get away.

(She couldn't do this. Him and her and them. Not now. Not like this.)

Avoiding him was her continued effort to distance herself from that mistake.

It wasn't hard to avoid him that first Saturday and Sunday directly following the kiss. She stayed home and since her parents were there, there was no chance he'd be stopping by. All she had to do for the rest of the weekend was not pick up her phone.

It was also relatively easy to avoid him at school. They didn't have any classes together. She took to eating lunch in her car alone or going off campus for lunch alone (and lying to her very nice new friends telling them she was meeting a lady who was helping her- vaguely described as Addie- for lunch and that was why she was suddenly absent from their table).

She also got lucky in that Mr. Schue had been out sick last week so glee club had been canceled and last Tuesday it had been skipped because Sue commandeered the room for kicks.

Today though, her luck was going to run out and she knew it. Today was Thursday and their wasn't any reason for practice to be canceled so she would definitely be seeing him. She was not looking forward to it.

But as the day began, Quinn tried to focus on everything else that had been going on in her life lately. A lot of which she had created to help keep her mind off of what she had done.

When classes started again Quinn started a new class- transferred into an economics class. That provided her a distraction in that these new kids in her new class, all a year older than her though you wouldn't guess it by the way she had treated some of them in the past, did not like her and were not over her baby-drama situation like nearly everyone in her old class was. Ignoring the names and comments made these first two weeks a lot more annoying and hurtful than school had been for a little bit now. It took some adjusting.

Rachel had also provided a convenient distraction. First thing their first morning back at school, Rachel had come up to her at her locker and announced, "I'm with Finn now. I felt I should tell you that in person because I think we've become friends and I'm now with your ex and I don't know the exact procedure on these sort of things, but I figured that in person and immediately was the proper way to let a friend know you're seeing their ex."

Before Quinn could say anything, Rachel rambled on, "You're okay with this, right? I thought you would be since you so obviously have feelings for Noah and since we've talked about me and Finn before and you gave me good advice. He proved he really wants me and I'm willing to trust it now so I feel good about taking a chance on him this time and it was your advice that led to me feeling okay about being cautious and then figuring us out."

"Rachel," Quinn interrupted firmly (she learned that if one wanted to get a word in with Rachel, sometimes that's just what had to be done). Once Rachel stopped talking, she offers, "I'm fine with it. I'm happy for you even. He really cares about you, I've known that for a long time, and I'm glad you two worked things out."

Rachel beamed at her, "Thank you Quinn. That's very nice of you."

Rachel looked like she wanted to say more and on a guess Quinn insists, "You'll have to tell me all about how you two got together sometime." She had a feeling Rachel hadn't told anyone or had gotten to talk about it at all and from knowing how this wasn't the sort of thing she was going to go into detail with, with her dads and how she didn't really have any good friends, it just made sense that this might have been the first time she had gotten to say anything about it.

She guessed right. "Really?" Rachel questioned, clearly happy about the suggestion.

"Of course," Quinn assures, "friends always share details." (She hopes Rachel is too distracted by her own happiness to realize that Quinn had never given her details about her and Puck, but she was willing to risk the comment because Rachel had said she thought they were friends and she wanted to be friends and wanted Rachel to know she agreed that they were.)

Rachel invites her over for the following afternoon because she had already had plans with Finn for afterschool that day. When they get to her house they head up to Rachel's room with snacks, let their schoolbooks lie forgotten, and sit on her bed and gab and eat for hours.

The first thing Rachel does is account exactly how she finally got together with Finn. She explains rapidly and excitedly, "As I mentioned, Finn had apologized for rejecting me and said it was a huge mistake and he had just been mixed up about a lot of stuff and he regretted so much that he took it out on me because he does want to be with me and I told him I could forgive him but I didn't feel like I believed that he really wanted me and I needed time. Which he seemed confused about but better with the idea when I suggested that we get back to being friends and see where that takes us. And we had been doing well as friends, I thought. We spent some lunches and breaks together talking. He told me about how his mom started dating and he had been thinking about his dad a lot lately already because of how for a while there he thought he was going to be a dad and all of that just…he missed him all over again so it was hard to accept his mom dating someone even if he liked the guy. And I told him about some personal things as well and I felt like we were on a good road. Our friendship was better than ever."

"I guess Finn didn't feel the same way about how things had been going though," Rachel says with a mysterious smile, "When Artie and Tina were singing just before midnight on New Years Eve, he pulled me upstairs and outside and I thought he was being really insane because it was cold out and I wanted to hear the song. But as soon as the door was shut behind us, he pulled me to him and he kissed me." Rachel takes a rare pause in talking and looks wistful as she recalls, "The second time we kissed, I kissed him and the first time I had to suggest to him that he kiss me so… it was a nice change, him making the first move. And when he pulled away he said, "Please tell me we can be together now. As much as I like having you as a friend, it's been torture not to be more because I love you." So I told him I love him too… and that we could be together now because he needed me to clarify that even though I had told him I love him."

"Wow," is all Quinn can respond. She's not sure what else to say to someone's love story coming true. "I'm glad everything worked out," she says, and she means it. After what she put him through, she's relieved Finn's happy. Plus, after realizing that what Rachel went through with Finn wasn't dissimilar to what she had been through (was still kind of going through), she was happy that Rachel's turmoil had a happy ending.

Rachel smiles and add, "I'm glad you're okay with the fact that everything worked out." Thinking that that sounded different in her head, Rachel hastily (unnecessarily) adds on, "I mean, I know you didn't love Finn-"

"I loved Finn," Quinn interrupts, thoroughly shocking Rachel, and, knowing that, continues quickly, "Not like you love him. But until recently, he was the only friend I had had in a very long time and he was a really great friend to me- even if we were putting a different label on what we were. For that, I do love him and care about him- _as a friend_. And it's why I still feel awful for not telling him the truth right from the beginning and for hurting him."

Rachel offers, "I don't think he's hurt anymore. I don't know anything for sure, but he just seems like…he's back to normal."

"I hope you're right," Quinn responds. She thought Finn seemed more like himself too lately, but they still hadn't spoken so she assumed he still wasn't okay with her even if he wasn't as hurt or angry anymore.

Rachel launches into telling Quinn everything her and Finn have done as a couple so far (dinner and a movie Saturday night, ice cream Sunday afternoon followed by meeting her dad's over dinner, and hanging out at his house yesterday after school). Quinn's relieved that Rachel must have been way too distracted by her new relationship to notice that Quinn left early on Friday. Though, she is a bit concerned that Rachel didn't seem to at least have heard that second hand from someone else (everyone else had been asking her why she left so quickly and without saying anything and she had lamely been lying that she hadn't felt well). She hopes that Rachel's lack of information is only because of her newfound coupledom and has nothing to do with still not really being on good, friendly terms with the rest of the glee club.

After they've gone from Rachel discussing Finn for a good hour, Rachel insists she wants to do something normal teen girls would do (which basically means she's not going to insist on watching a musical or discussing music or glee club). Once she sees a _The Hills_ re-run marathon on, she decides that watching MTV together is just the common teen activity she's looking for. Quinn can see how she's determined to do something "normal" so she doesn't tell Rachel how she's been avoiding this particular channel and all versions of it for months now. She had found that she couldn't take even seeing just the commercials for _16 and Pregnant _and _Teen Mom _(they seem to manage to hit way too close to home and really far from it for her all at the same time because her story has both everything and nothing in common with the few she saw before she found herself pregnant- now she just can't bear to watch and see if similarities or differences would increase).

Quinn was never much of a fan of _The Hills_, she had just never found it that captivating, which is why it's not a very effective distraction for the moment. It's also why, after only a little more than one episode, Quinn's glad Rachel jumps back in to talking. Though of all the things for Rachel to blurt out, she really didn't see this one coming (yay! for a super effective topic to draw her mind away from the several things stuck there lately though- at least for a little bit).

"My mom contacted me," Rachel blurts out suddenly as, on screen, Lauren is getting told to fire Stephanie from People's Revolution.

"Your mom?" Quinn questions confused. She was never clear on Rachel's…parentage situation. She knew she was biologically one of her dad's (clearly David) and that was basically the extent of her knowledge. She had assumed they used an egg donor _and_ a surrogate though- from the way everyone talked, but it doesn't sound that way anymore.

"Birth mom, I guess is the correct term," Rachel corrects herself. Realizing that Quinn probably doesn't understand- it wasn't the most conventional of situations- she explains, "When my dads decided they wanted a child they went looking for someone willing to be both the egg donor and surrogate. They didn't have high hopes for finding that so they checked out egg donation and surrogacy separately too. But, after a couple of months, someone responded to their ad and offered to donate a couple of eggs to my dads and, after they fertilized all of them with both of their…stuff, carry any child or children that resulted from implantation. She liked them and she was young and they were paying her so she agreed to give up rights to any children that came from the implantation and let them be the parents. My dads really liked her so they thought having a daughter with half of her genes would be wonderful and when they said goodbye to her and thanked her, they didn't expect to hear from her again- that's why they've never told me much more about the situation than everything I just told you."

"Okay," Quinn responds slowly, taking all of the information in and trying to make sense of it all. She's not sure where Rachel was going with all of this, but from the way she was blurting things out so fast and seemed to have the words right at the tip of her tongue, she gets the feeling that this is another thing Rachel hasn't talked to anyone about. "So how did she contact you? What did she want?"

"Technically she contacted my dads- first at least," Rachel shakes her head a little, as if to clear it. All of this has been weighing on her mind for a while, she hadn't wanted to deal with it so she hadn't, but then suddenly she was blurting out what happened and now she was really in it- thinking about it, considering it. She recalls, "My dads got a letter from her at the start of winter break. She told them that, initially, she had never planned to be in my life at all because she knew that she agreed to let the two of them be my parents- and she's sure they were/are great parents. But she missed me, all the time. So she planned on contacting me the minute I turned twenty-one, because apparently that's as soon as birth parent can contact a child they gave up in the state of Ohio. But…" Rachel pauses and starts from a different point, "She was nineteen when she agreed to my dads' arrangement and she did it because she really needed the money. She didn't have a good family situation and she was working two jobs and she still barely had any savings at all and she really wanted to get to…Broadway. So after I was born she used the money from my dads, moved to New York, and she went on every audition she could get. She also went to college though- figuring she'd either drop out when she got her big break or she'd get a teaching degree as a back-up. She didn't get a big break though and she found she really enjoyed teaching music and she especially enjoyed coaching show choirs."

Quinn wants to ask about that, because, show choir, that was quite a coincidence (and are life goals hereditary- she can't help but wonder). But Rachel is still forging on in her typical rapid pace, "A few years ago she got an offer to move back to Ohio and coach a show choir here. She's been Vocal Adrenaline's coach for three years- the three years they've won Nationals. And one of the reasons she's good is because she scopes out any competition she can and…she was at our sectionals performance." With glassy eyes and with a sad, yet proud, smile, Rachel continues, "She saw me sing and she told my dads that she just couldn't wait to meet me anymore. She understands though that it's not her place. That's why she hesitated in writing them and why she wrote them instead of trying to just contact me. She wanted to know if they would be okay with her contacting me sooner than my twenty first birthday. Also, if they were okay with it, she only wanted them to let her if they thought I could handle it. She included a separate letter to me with the one she sent them, just in case they thought I was ready. She said she hoped she heard from them and from me and she was sorry if she's way out of line."

"That's unbelievable," Quinn comments. Rachel's birth mom is their biggest competition's coach? She just happened to see her perform? It's like it was fate that they were meant to cross paths in their lives even if Rachel's mom had originally chosen otherwise. "Did you read her letter?" Quinn questions, curious. She assumed since Rachel knew all the details, seemingly, of the letter to her dads, they must have thought she was ready to hear from her mom and given her the letter.

"Yes," Rachel confirms and clears her throat (it had gotten a little watery). She smiles, (though her smile still has a hint of sadness in it it's had this whole conversation), "She said I was sensational and she could tell that my dads had been terrific parents because I seemed just wonderful. She said she'd like to meet me whenever I'm ready and that if I'm not ready when we'll be encountering her team at regional's, just to let my dads know to tell her that and she'll skip it." Thoughtfully, Rachel offers, "Which could be useful to us in the competition- to make sure Vocal Adrenaline doesn't have their coach there on competition day. Though the fact that she offered to skip it, with three National titles to her name- that I know of, might mean that her team would be fine without her. If I have anything in common with her at all then I don't think she'd throw a competition for anything so offering to skip could be an indication that Vocal Adrenaline will be so well prepared that they won't even need her there on the day."

Rachel's competitive minded-ness had clearly derailed her from the real point of what they were talking about. Quinn interjects, looking for clarification, "So you're not going to meet her then?"

Rachel's mouth snaps shut at the question. She considers it for a few beats of silence. This was why she hadn't wanted to give the whole situation any thought. Because the honest truth was, "I don't know." There were so many uncertainties about going through with it, so many potential pros and cons of going through with it, and she already had a good life, she didn't know if she wanted to change it at all if she had a choice not to. (But, even though her dads were the best parents any girl could ask for, she did always wonder about her mom, what she'd be like, if she'd like her.)

"Although, if it would help you- since I know you're uncertain about what you're going to do about your baby- I could contact my birth mother and see if she'd talk to you about what it's like to give a child away. It wasn't exactly the same situation of course, but there are similarities and if it would help you I'd call her to see if she'd be willing to meet you," Rachel offers.

That was a nice offer, but Quinn couldn't accept it. "Thank you, but I already asked Ms. Pillsbury to find people who had been through similar situations and, actually, I just met with her yesterday to talk to her about arranging meetings with the people she found and with adoption agencies- they should offer some insight too." (Crap. She hadn't meant to let the adoption agency part slip. After all, she should probably tell Puck that development first…once she's not so mortified by her impulsive action that she can face him again. Hopefully, Rachel's own drama will keep her from noticing it much.)

"Oh," Rachel says looking crestfallen. But then her face contorts in confusion and she asks, "So your month of not thinking about the future is over?" Quinn hadn't told her about that, which is why she's looking so curiously at her now. Rachel adds by way of explanation, "Everyone knows about it. I just never heard when it started."

Everyone knows? That really doesn't surprise Quinn much. It seemed that telling one person in glee club something always seemed to lead to everyone in glee club knowing. On the bright side of everyone in glee being gossips (okay, she's not exactly an exception to that), it's good to know that Rachel is apparently being included by the others in at least some of the stuff that's passed around. Maybe that means that she's making some real friends in their fellow glee club members too. Getting to what Rachel said though, Quinn responds, "The month is over and…I don't have much longer, I need to start making decisions." This conversation wasn't about her though (and she really wanted to keep it that way- avoid her problems a little bit longer), so she adds, "Ms. Pillsbury already found me someone to talk to who gave away a child- and one who kept hers- so I don't really need to discuss it with your mom. But if you want someone to go with you to meet her, I could go for moral support."

Rachel is surprised, pleasantly so, and smiles at Quinn as she responds, "Thank you." She considers, "But I think that if I do decide to meet her, I should do it alone. You know?" Quinn nods. Rachel leans back on the pillows behind her and returns her gaze to the forgotten television. She confides, "I just wish I knew what I should do."

"Ditto," Quinn concurs with a heavy sigh, running her hand over her stomach and letting her attention return to the marathon on TV as well.

Unfortunately, Rachel brining up her mom makes Quinn's mind drift back to all the things she had been hoping she'd escape thinking about the whole time she was hanging out with her new friend. By the time she returns home after having dinner with Rachel and her dads, she's so drained from all the thoughts weighing on her mind that she finds herself praying that she could turn back time, at least a few days, at least then she wouldn't be alone again out of feeling like a screw-up for the mistake she made.

-o-o-o-

A few days later, a week after the kiss, Quinn decides that maybe she should tell Jessica about it. First, she knows Jessica really enjoys any kind of story these days and especially ones involving her and Puck. But, second, and more importantly, maybe Jessica could help her find a way out of this or at least encourage her to stop being so cowardly in avoiding Puck (yes, she knows she's being stupid in avoiding him over something she did- but she can't help that she now has the urge to flee and hide every time she sees him even if it's not rational).

The problem with telling Jessica though, is that Quinn knows how she's going to react and she's so not looking forward to it. Still, she knows she needs to do something and talking to Jessica usually helps or at least makes her feel better so Friday night she signs on to Skype and finds her sister.

"Quinn!" Jessica greets happily. Her smile quickly fades as she narrows her eyes at her sister and asks, "What are you doing home tonight? It seems like you've been home nearly every night this week and May says you haven't stopped by all week?"

Considering she's avoiding Puck, stopping by and seeing his family isn't an option. But she doesn't want to dive right into the middle of that right now so she offers, "I've just been tired lately. Working all break, I'm just worn out. Staying in and sleeping most of last weekend helped, but I've still been exhausted after school every day so I haven't had the energy to do much beyond homework. And I'm only staying in tonight because I have plans tomorrow and I don't want to be exhausted at lunch with my friends."

"Okay," Jessica accepts skeptically. She drops it for now and continues, "I'm glad you called tonight, I wanted to ask you something before I forget it."

"What?" Quinn asks, having no idea what to expect with her sister.

"What's the name of the teacher who's running your glee club?" Jessica asks. It wasn't on the McKinley High website- they desperately needed to update a lot of stuff on there.

"Mr. Schuester. Why?" Quinn asks, worried about where this could be going.

"Because McKinley's website, while it does list teacher's subject and email address and phone numbers, doesn't mention what extra curricular things they do," Jessica answers as she writes down the name Quinn gave her so she doesn't forget again.

Email address and phone number, crap. "Why are you going to contact Mr. Schue?"

"You know Fat Jack's Pizza?" Jessica asks.

"Yes," Quinn answers, even more confused about what her sister's doing now.

"Do you remember my friend Gina- from high school?"

"Sort of."

"She married the guy that owns Fat Jacks and she's kind of become the manager for him and I was catching up with her the other day and she said she could give your club a deal. You know, on a post- competition meal? You guys do go out together after competitions, right? We used to do that when I was a cheerleader, I assumed it was the same thing and I wanted to let your glee teacher know that I can get him a discount so he doesn't have to worry about finding a place," Jessica explains. Plus she also wanted any adult in Quinn's life to have a way to contact her. Or for that matter any person in Quinn's life. She hated that she was so far away from her right now and never could tell everything that was going on with her.

"Oh," Quinn says. She had thought that Jessica was just trying to talk to another person in her life about her, check up on her more (and she'd be so embarrassed if Jessica started talking about her and her personal life with Mr. Schue). Answering the question that was mixed in with her explanation, Quinn responds, "Yeah, we went out after our last competition so I guess we would this time too. Thanks for thinking of that. We could really use something cheaper- it was hard enough to find the money to cover the cost of the bus to the last competition."

"Well, you are at a public school so I figured anything that saves you guys money would be a good thing," Jessica offers. Now that she had the answer out of her sister she needed, Jessica decides that it's safe to broach the subject that might result in Quinn closing up on her. "So," she speculates, "you don't seem that tired. You want to tell me what's really been going on with you lately?"

She needs help, Quinn reminds herself. She dives into the topic before she can talk herself out of it (again). "She kicked," she tells her sister. (She can feel the corners of her mouth turn up slightly as she says the two words and she wishes she didn't have that reaction. Everything would be so much easier if she didn't.)

"Really?" Jessica asks with a smile. "Aw, I wish I was there. Tell me everything. When did it happen? What did it feel like?"

"It felt…strange," Quinn says, tackling the easier question first because even though she didn't know how to explain how it felt, it was the easier question. "It felt real," she adds quietly. She had still been able to pretend sometimes, in solitary moments, that she wasn't pregnant and that everything her life had become because of it wasn't true. But since the baby kicked there just wasn't any more pretending. It was impossible to pretend when she could feel her.

Okay. Jessica wasn't quite sure what to do with that. But if Quinn wanted to explain, she would. So Jessica accepts her answer as is for now and moves on, "When did it happen? Tonight? While you were at school today?"

"New Years Eve," Quinn answers and takes a deep breath, preparing herself for what she knows will probably come soon now.

"Before, during, or after the party you went to?" Jessica asks.

"During," she answers. She knows Jessica has more questions so she offers more of the story, "Artie had a karaoke machine, among many other things, and Puck didn't want to do it, but after everyone convinced him to sing, she kicked while he was singing."

"Really?" Jessica asks with a smirk, "Isn't that interesting?" Well… hold on, "Wait. You're just telling me this now? A week later? Why? What else happened?"

This is the part she really wasn't relishing. Quinn forces herself to answer and explains, "I went off with Puck alone so he could feel her kick- I didn't want everyone to know and everyone touching my stomach or anything. And I…" she hesitates, but makes herself admit, "kissed him."

"Finally!" Jessica exclaims, ecstatic. Her smile quickly fades as she continues, "Which of course must not have gone well or something because you're only telling me about this now. So what happened next?"

"It was just an impulse. A really bad one. So I kind of…ran away and I've been avoiding him because…I can't deal with this right now," Quinn admits. Her anxiety bubbling up, she gives into it rambling, "I have too many other things to think about. I'm nearly half way through with the pregnancy. Or if she's early than I am halfway through and I don't have much longer and I have to decide what to do for two lives- hers and mine. And if I keep her then I'm going to have to take care of a baby and I don't know how to do that and I don't have much money and no matter what I have to find somewhere else to live and then I have to figure out how to be a mom and I have to get a job and I barely have any work experience and I'm still in high school and what if I don't get to finish it, what kind of life could I provide her with then? I don't know if I could do it, be a mother now. And even if I could, would I really be able to give her a good life? And my only other option is to give her up- forever. And it makes more sense because then she'd probably, definitely have a better life but…I don't know what I would do after that. How could I just…go on with school and _everything_ after deciding to never see her for her whole life?" Quinn takes a ragged breath, wipes the tears of sheer mental exhaustion from her face, and adds, "I can't even begin to deal with anything extra- and especially not deciding what Puck and I are or aren't. That was complicated long before I got pregnant and now…I just can't think about that too."

"I know honey," Jessica says sympathetically. "Gosh I wish I was there right now so I could give you a hug," she says, wishing she weren't so far away for the millionth time. "You don't have to deal with you and Puck right now though. It's okay that you're not, you know?"

"It was okay and then I went and stupidly kissed him and brought it all up again," Quinn responds. Because that was the biggest problem with all of this- what Puck must be expecting now, what he must have thought it meant and what she's going to have to explain to him about it.

"So?" Jessica questions, "You're a girl, a pregnant one at that, you're allowed to have mood swings and change your mind as much as you want. And furthermore, haven't you read that _What To Expect _book?"

"Not all of it yet."

"Seriously? I finished my copy forever ago," Jessica says surprised. Usually, between her and Quinn, she was not the faster reader.

"You have all day every day free, I've had a job and school," Quinn rationalizes.

"Okay," Jessica waves it off and explains why she brought it up, "Anyway, one of the chapters mentions how at some point in your pregnancy- I'm pretty sure it was during the second trimester like you're in now- a woman's libido goes into overdrive. Which means you can blame the whole kiss thing on being pregnant and then you don't have to deal with it or explain it or talk to him about it beyond that at all. It's a legitimate condition and it would be impossible for him to tell whether or not it's the real reason you kissed him."

"Huh," Quinn says, considering it.

"Although, for the record, if you were to just tell Puck the truth- that you can't deal with your relationship with him right now so you have to forget about the kiss for now- I'm positive he'd understand," Jessica adds.

"You're probably right," Quinn agrees, "but I don't want him to have to understand. It feels like toying with him or jerking him around to kiss him and then turn around and ask him to understand why I can't think about what it did or didn't mean and why I can't let it happen again for now."

Well, she can't really argue against that. If Quinn weren't pregnant and this was just something she had done with an ex, she'd tell her to quit jerking the guy around. So Jessica understands where Quinn's coming from and finds it a pretty understandable place to be. She offers again, "Well, then use the pregnancy excuse. But do it soon because it's pretty clear that being back to trying to make a decision is already taking a huge toll on you. You need to get back to talking to Puck so he can shoulder some of the decisions with you like you two wanted."

"I know," Quinn agrees with her sister again.

"Good," Jessica declares. Since Quinn agreed with her and seemed to want to resolve the mess she created, Jessica decides to drop the issue for now and trust that Quinn would follow through on taking her advice. With the important things resolved, she has other things she feels they need to talk about. "Now that that's settled, I need details. What song was Puck singing when the baby started kicking? Where were you two alone? What was his reaction to feeling the baby kick? How did the kiss happen? And, actually, I will need a play-by-play of the whole kiss. Go," Jessica rattles of excitedly and settles into her bed, getting more comfortable.

Quinn begrudgingly gives in and shares every detail (even though normally, she liked to keep these sort of moments just between her and Puck). After all, Jessica did give her a convenient solution to her problem so answering all of her questions was the least she could do.

-o-o-o-

"It's not like that. He's tutoring me in math because he's nice. It's nothing more than that," Mercedes insists (again- this had somehow kept coming up throughout lunch).

"No matter how nice a guy is, he doesn't give up his Saturday afternoon to tutor a girl that he's _not _interested in. He's definitely into you so expect him to make a move eventually," Bruce counters. Seeing he might need some support, he asks, "Guys, I'm right, right? You wouldn't do what this Sean is doing with Mercedes unless you were interested in the person you were doing it with romantically?"

"Word," Artie agrees.

"Probably not," Kurt agrees as well. He didn't actually have an opinion on the scenario- he couldn't see tutoring someone as a way to get closer to them (mostly because Finn is/was his last crush and the idea of trying to tutor him seemed like it would take far more patience that Kurt possessed. Plus, you know, he knew it wouldn't go anywhere of course- Finn being straight and all.) But he appreciated that Bruce said "person" instead of "girl" so that he was including him in the question too. Tina's dad, the few times he had been around him, had always been really good about making him feel completely at ease. So he agrees with what Bruce said because Bruce deserved it. Not to mention that he also strongly suspected that Sean was really into his best friend.

"Just because a guy is interested doesn't mean that he's going to do anything so maybe you should stop getting Mercedes' hopes up," Tina points out. She quickly adds to her friend, "I do think that if he's interested, he'd do something about it eventually, but not every guy does."

"And who exactly are you talking about? Because I'd really like to know and I'm sure Artie is also very interested to know how you know some boys don't always do anything when they like a girl," Bruce asks.

"I was talking about Ben," Tina says, rolling her eyes at her dad. She told him everything, he should know that there wasn't some secret guy she knew was into her and never said anything because if there was, she definitely would have talked to him about it. Sometimes he could be kind of insecure, thinking she was holding out telling him things (she supposes that's one of the effects of the way her mom just seemed to up and decide she didn't want to be married to him anymore- always suspecting he didn't know what people were really thinking or feeling). "How many girls did he have a crush on when he was in high school and how many times did he do anything about it?"

"Well-" Bruce begins to defend his son (even if Tina had a point).

"The answers are tons and zero. I mean, he even had a crush on Quinn's sister and I bet she had no idea he even existed because he never did anything about it," Tina jumps in and looks to Quinn for confirmation.

She didn't really want to get involved, she had just been still picking at her french fries, listening as everyone teased Mercedes about her and Sean and their "study sessions." So she's a bit startled when she's suddenly dragged into the conversation, but catches on quickly and supports Tina agreeing, "I did actually ask Jessica if she knew your brother and she said…and I quote, 'I didn't know there were any Asian kids in my class.'" Quinn cringes, because it really sounded bad, but offers, "She didn't notice a lot in high school though. She was too busy pretending to be everything my parents wanted her to be while secretly breaking every rule they ever made and every belief they tried to force on her."

"Tawdry," Kurt comments, "I want to meet your sister even more now."

"Me too," Mercedes agrees, "and you know it would have been a lot better of a lunch if Quinn just told us about her sister's high school rebellions instead of you guys bugging me about Sean again. You know, eventually I might just stop hanging out with all of you." She's not serious and they all know it, Mercedes was just messing with them. She knew all of the Sean talk was just good fun. She stands and announces, "I've got to get going before I'm late for tutoring."

"Have fun sweetie," Kurt wishes, and he's not teasing this time. He can't help adding though, "Your lip gloss needs reapplying before I'm letting you go anywhere though."

Mercedes rolls her eyes, but lets her best friend drag her to the ladies room anyway.

"So Quinn, what did you think of your first Kewpee's cheeseburger?" Bruce asks, not letting the conversation lull.

"It was delicious," she lies with a smile. Honestly, she didn't think it was anything special (though she's going to keep the fact that it's cheap in mind for the future- in case she ends up…she can't think about now). She did devour her burger anyway though. The baby was hungry. (Really hungry- she had a milkshake and had now finished her entire order of fries as well. And she had a very large breakfast not very long ago.)

Bruce buys the lie (thankfully) and returns Quinn's smile as he says, "Good. I'm glad you liked it. Now, what other tasty restaurants can we take you to that your parents never let you go?"

She's not really what to say to that. There were a lot of places her parents detested for various reasons, but she had actually made it to quite a few of them (it's not like Lima had a ton of places to eat) and had never bothered with others because, in general, she did like to at least try to eat healthily. She can't think of a specific place, so Quinn offers, "I don't know. Lately though, breakfast food has pretty much always sounded good."

"Waffle House," Artie blurts out.

"Yes! Good call Artie," Bruce agrees. "We just decided that the next place we're going to introduce Quinn to is the Waffle House," Bruce informs Kurt and Mercedes as they approach the table, "Are you in for that one?"

"Sure," Mercedes agrees easily. Waffles were always good in her opinion (even if they were probably going to come with a side of questions about her completely platonic relationship with her math tutor).

"Waffles are full of carbs," Kurt says with a bit of disgust. He adds reasonably, "They do serve egg whites and some less heart attack inducing fare though."

"Fantastic," Bruce declares, "and not that lunching with all of you wasn't a pleasure, but maybe next time you could drag along a few more of these people I keep hearing about from Ti."

"If my dad's not working he's going to want to come, he loves the Waffle House," Kurt offers.

"I'd love to meet him," Bruce says kindly.

"Maybe we could ask," Tina begins and stalls. Everyone seems to realize exactly the problems with the other people she could have finished her sentence with. Puck was apparently no longer someone Quinn wanted to be around- yeah, they had all noticed. Rachel came as an item along with Finn now and Finn, as far as anyone could tell, didn't seem to be back on good terms with Quinn so that ruled the two of them out. Santana would most definitely laugh at their invitation.

Blurting out the only logical end to the sentence they were left with, Artie supplies, "Brittany. She seems to like us and she…eats."

"Actually, Brittany loves breaking the Cheerio's diet so she'd probably love to come," Quinn supplies. It seemed like most of the glee kids had been wary of getting to know Brittany much, but mostly because she was nearly always with Santana who they rightly feared. It would probably be good for them to get to know Brittany alone.

"Okay, I guess we can work out a day to go later. We should let Mercedes get to her completely platonic tutoring," Bruce added with a smirk.

"Yes, I do have to get going," Mercedes hugs everyone goodbye. Except Bruce who she stops in front of and tells him that she won't hug him until he says Sean is just her tutor and nothing more like he means it and with a straight face. Bruce responds that there's no point in him even trying, he wouldn't be able to lie like that. She ends up hugging him goodbye anyway.

Kurt promptly leaves after Mercedes, he was actually supposed to be spending today helping his dad at the garage, or at least that's what he had agreed to yesterday and he had been feeling kind of bad that it was now almost two in the afternoon and he hadn't been there yet.

"We're going to go down the street to the Coffee Hut," Tina tells her dad after Kurt leaves and hastily leaves with Artie before her dad can comment.

"Which is code for 'we're going to go make out before you drive Artie back home," Bruce informs Quinn after his daughter and her boyfriend leave.

Quinn smiles in return (it's nice he knows his daughter that well and that he's so cool with it). She hadn't really planned on lunch taking so long (they'd been here nearly two hours). She had wanted to get home and find that chapter in that book that Jessica had mentioned, she'd been too tired after getting off the phone with her last night. But she can't leave Bruce sitting here all alone so she figures she should probably stay until Tina and Artie get back.

Quinn is about to thank Bruce again for taking her and everyone to lunch (she couldn't come up with anything else to say and she felt it needed to be said again besides), but before she can Bruce comments smartly, "I noticed no one suggested that Puck come to our next meal. In fact, it was sort of like everyone was avoiding mentioning him."

She doesn't know how to respond to that.

Seeing that Quinn's struggling with what to say, Bruce offers, "For the record, besides that weirdness, Tina also mentioned that you haven't been eating lunch with them all week and they haven't seen you with Puck at all and he's constantly been asking all of them if they know where you are. So I've already figured out that you're avoiding him."

"Everything's fine," Quinn tries to assure, "I was just being stupid. I talked it all out with my sister last night finally and…everything's going to be fine."

"So from here you're going to go see him and stop avoiding him for whatever reason you haven't mentioned?" Bruce questions.

"No. He's at work. And as much as I'd like to get things back to normal as soon as possible, going over to his place tonight or tomorrow night after he's off work would mean his sister and/or his mom listening in so I'm going to wait until I can talk to him alone at school on Monday," Quinn explains, thinking quickly. Honestly, despite talking to her sister and deciding to go with the excuse she came up with for her behavior, and as much as she just wanted things to get back to what had become normal, she had made no plans to seek him out and talk to him. She just figured she'd talk to him the next time she sees him and it would all get resolved.

"Okay," Bruce accepts, but he sounds doubtful.

"I just…did something stupid and followed it up by avoiding Puck, which was also stupid. Everything really will be fine though. I'm going to fix it on Monday," Quinn assures again because it doesn't sound like Bruce believes her (and she's not sure she really believes herself).

"You know you can always blame anything you do on the pregnancy?" Bruce suggests, "Connie always used to and you know, no one can argue with something like that. What are you going to say? You're not acting emotional or crazy because you're pregnant, that's just you. No you can't say that to a woman _ever _and especially not a pregnant one." He laughs and recalls, "For about the last trimester when Connie was pregnant with our oldest, she refused to drive. And she had the most illogical reason for refusing to drive too. And we didn't live here then, we lived in this small town in upstate New York and it was the kind of place where you had to drive a car to get anywhere but she refused and it was ridiculous, but I could never tell her that."

"Why wouldn't she drive?" Quinn asks, hoping that they don't get back to the topic of her (or her and Puck) while she continues to wait with Bruce for Tina and Artie to return.

He laughs at the memory and dives into telling her the whole story. Luckily for Quinn, she's right in thinking talking about his own past would distract Bruce for a while and keep the topic off her.

Quinn, however, was wrong when she thought she'd just tell Puck the excuse she came up with the next time she saw him because when she sees him at school on Monday she ducks into the nearest classroom before she can stop herself (and it's not even a class she has). She had prepared to tell him what Jessica had suggested- blame her actions on the pregnancy. She even read up on how, by a woman's second trimester, she's producing as much estrogen in a single day than a non-pregnant woman produces in three years so with her estrogen in overdrive it's likely to become easily sexually aroused. She knew this would be kind of an embarrassing conversation to have, so she had rehearsed it in her head- even partially blaming Puck because he's the one who helped her get in this state where she can't always control herself very well. Yet, as much as she prepared, she still found herself hiding.

(Sure, part of her hiding was out of embarrassment. Every time she saw Puck she felt like she was a mean idiot because she kissed him and wanted to ignore it, which she knew wasn't fair but it was the way she needed it to be right now. But part of her was also avoiding him because what if, when she tried to tell him her excuse, rather than actually saying any of it, she ends up kissing him again? Kissing him once had already made a mess out of things, it'd be a true disaster if she did it again. And the problem was, she wasn't sure that she wouldn't even though she knew it would be a bad idea right now.)

She knew it was stupid and cowardly to be hiding again on Monday, and yet she found herself doing it Tuesday and Wednesday as well. She knew she'd encounter him today, Thursday, because Mr. Schue was here and nothing was going to interrupt them actually having glee practice today. She was dreading being there with him when she hadn't talked to him because she'd been chickening out of it all week.

Which is why she should have been grateful for what happened during her third period class. She got a note to go see Ms. Pillsbury and had assumed it meant she had gotten everything set up to talk to the people she found and to meet with the adoption agencies, but Ms. Pillsbury was weird when she got there. She seemed nervous as she quickly said that she'd be right back to talk to her, she just had to take something to Principal Figgins first and then she ran out of her office empty handed. Though that oddness confused Quinn, she didn't have to be confused for long because the next thing she knew Puck was coming through Ms. Pillsbury's door saying, "We need to talk."

She knows, she should have been grateful for that because they did need to talk and it was better that they do so before they have to be together in glee club this afternoon. Still, (and she knows it's stupid of her) Quinn finds herself wishing that she could get around him and run out the door. But instead, it looks like she's going to have to finally face what happened nearly two weeks ago.

-o-o-o-

For Puck, the last thirteen days had been thoroughly frustrating. Well, there had been a little bit of good stuff and some weird stuff that happened too, but mostly, his days had been incredibly annoying.

It all started Friday night. He should have seen it coming- her stopping kissing him suddenly and running away. It had been brief, but she had kinda, sort of mentioned it once that the two of them, as a couple, needed to stay on the back burner for now. She didn't want to or couldn't deal with it on top of the baby situation right now, or they always went wrong so it wasn't good timing, or something. He didn't completely get it, but she was the smarter one so he figured she was right.

Instead of seeing it coming though, he was pretty much blindsided when she backed away, grabbed her coat, said she couldn't and she was sorry and went running out the door. Thankfully his brain started working again before he went back downstairs and he was able to convincingly lie to everyone saying that Quinn hadn't been feeling well, nothing to worry about, but she slipped out because she didn't want to ruin anyone's night by barfing all over the place and didn't say goodbye because she didn't want them trying to convince her that they'd be cool with that and she should stay. He thinks Rachel probably would have caught on to the fact that he was lying (girl seemed to have a knack for that with him sometimes- it was _so_ inconvenient), but luckily she's disappeared somewhere. And come to think of it so had Finn…Oh.

The rest of the party wasn't much fun for Puck. He slipped away several times to try and call Quinn, but she wasn't answering her phone. He ended up leaving earlier than most of the others, saying he was going to check on Quinn before heading home to keep up the illusion that everything was okay (though apparently it really wasn't).

First thing Saturday morning, before he goes to work, he tries calling Quinn and he hopes that the only reason she didn't pick up this time is because she's still asleep (it is barely 8 in the morning after all). But then she doesn't answer any of his calls or respond to any of his texts all weekend (25 calls, 14 texts).

To make things worse, his mom catches on to the fact that something is wrong on Saturday night. She follows him to his room when he gets home from work asking, "Noah, how come Quinn doesn't seem to want to come over here? I called to invite her to spend tonight with us, it being New Years day and all and I figured she's got to be all alone at her house and not much better off if she isn't. But she said she couldn't tonight. She gave a really lame excuse about still being tired from last night's party, but it seemed like she had to put effort into coming up with that idea. So what happened?" (And yes, he worked New Years day. Hank had some on-call emergency services and apparently he was one of few people in town willing to take calls on New Years. They only fixed a toilet and two heaters and they really racked in a lot of money- holiday rate.)

"Nothing," he denies evenly.

"Well it's obvious she's either avoiding you or us and she saw you last so think of everything that happened. It's possible you did something without knowing. Especially right now- pregnant women can be very sensitive," May insists.

Puck sighs heavily and sits down on his bed. If Quinn wasn't telling his mom what happened, then she obviously didn't want his mom to know and he'd only be giving her more reason to be upset or angry or whatever she was right now if he went and told his mom the truth. But he can't lie completely either, not without inserting some truth at least he knows (he's very practiced at this). So he offers, "Yeah, I agree she's probably mad at me- hasn't picked up any of my calls all day. But I have no idea what could have happened. Last night was a good night. We had fun. She sang some karaoke with some of the others, we played some games, there was good food... it was a party, we had a good time, that was it. So I have to figure that something else happened, between the end of the party and this morning, that made her not want to talk to me or maybe she just doesn't want to talk about whatever it is and that's why she's not talking to either one of us."

May mulls it all over for a minute and offers, "Well, if nothing happened between you two, then I suppose you're probably right- something must have happened that she just doesn't want to talk about so she's not talking to anyone. When you're pregnant, you can be very emotional, so I don't think we should push her to talk."

"I was going to keep trying to call, but I figured I'd just find her at school on Monday if she hasn't answered any of my calls," Puck explains.

"That sounds like a good idea. And I won't try to call again until Monday night. If she doesn't want to talk to you on Monday either though, maybe you should talk to some of her friends and see if they know what's going on," May figures. She adds, "We could always call Jessica if we need to."

They could call Jessica, but if Quinn hadn't told her anything just like she hadn't mentioned anything to his mom, he didn't want her to find out from him. Calling Jessica would definitely be a sign to her that something was up so if she didn't know anything, she'd know as soon as he called. To try and avoid that situation, he suggests, "Maybe we should try to hold off calling her though." To his mother's curious look, he adds, "We shouldn't make her worry if it's not absolutely necessary- especially since she can't come here to see Quinn or help her or anything."

"Right," May agrees, "if this goes on a while, which I hope it doesn't, then we'll contact Jessica but we shouldn't make her worry unnecessarily. I know she feels awful for not being able to be here." She adds, because she thinks she may have panicked about the situation a little bit (and no one needed her to be the one to do that), "Don't worry. I'm sure everything's fine and everything will be back to normal soon."

"I know," Puck says, though he's not sure how much he believes it. He understood if she thought it was a mistake, the kiss, but couldn't they move on from that already if it was? Maybe there was something bigger going on that he didn't know about or maybe the kiss was a bigger deal than he had figured. Either way, he's more than a little worried that maybe things would stay like this forever, that they'd go back to not talking to each other (they had already turned to that so many times before).

"Good," May says with a smile. As she's leaving his room, she adds, "Oh, and you're babysitting Kelyn and cooking dinner Wednesday night. I'm going to go look at more houses after work." Before he can even open his mouth to protest, she adds, "Don't argue."

After Quinn doesn't answer any of his calls on Sunday, Puck tries to find her at school on Monday. He knows her schedule so he doesn't expect it to be hard to find her, but it is. (Apparently, she's putting a lot of effort into not being found.) He doesn't want to alarm anyone from glee club, her new friends, so as he drops by their table towards the end of lunch he tries to act casual when he asks where Quinn is (and he knows she didn't sit with them at all during lunch, he had been watching). They don't seem suspicious, not on Monday at least.

He doesn't hear until the day is nearly over on Tuesday that Mr. Schue is out sick and glee practice is canceled. Since he hadn't managed to find her all day Tuesday as well, he had been counting on seeing her then- he didn't think she'd skip. He calls Hank and goes to work earlier than he normally does on glee practice days and tries to forget about it (tries not to worry that something bigger than he knows is going on).

Wednesday and trying to find Quinn is more of the same, except he can't keep the desperate tone out of his voice when he asks the glee kids if they've seen her and it's pretty clear that they know something is up. He ends up taking his frustrations out on the dinner he tries to make for him and Kelyn. It's inedible. He orders pizza.

Thursday, as he's zoning out during geometry, Kurt- who doesn't usually talk to him about non glee related stuff and definitely not while they weren't supposed to be talking- says to him, "What's going on with you and Quinn? Everyone's noticed something's up. After your Christmas road trip we all started placing bets on when you'd two become a couple. Though now all of that suddenly seems pointless."

"I hope it wasn't pointless," Puck says, avoiding the question.

"Me too. I bet on it happening around her birthday and that's still a couple of months away," Kurt offers.

"Can I get in on that?" Maybe things weren't looking too good right now, but he hopes things would turn around. (And he couldn't resist a bet.)

Kurt turns and raises an eyebrow at him as he responds, "I guess. But are you sure you want to place that kind of bet? She's clearly not speaking to you right now and as frustrated as you seem by that, I think that that's been going on since Artie's party."

"That's a good guess," Puck returns quietly. He sighs a little and offers, "I can't tell you anything. If Quinn wanted anyone to know, she'd have said something to you guys about it. I'd really appreciate it if you tried to talk to her about it though. I know I could make everything fine if she'd just talk to me, but I can't even find her."

"She's been leaving campus during lunch," Kurt informs him, hoping that resolved a little bit of how she managed to never be around. He adds, with another glance to Puck, "I'll try to talk to her."

"Thank you," Puck says, looking to Kurt gratefully.

But the next day Kurt meets him in class early and tells him how he invited Quinn to dinner at his house with his dad and she had never turned down an invitation before, not without having other plans, not even when they weren't really friends yet, but is seemed she couldn't turn down his invitation quick enough this time. Her excuse was lame (in his opinion) too- she was tired.

Puck feels like punching something, but refrains. He is in class after all and hitting a desk or classmate wouldn't be smart.

The rest of the day doesn't go any better. Puck hangs out (hiding, of course) near Quinn's car in the parking lot, but apparently today she's hiding somewhere on campus.

He heads home after work feeling like crap. It had been a week. He'd gone longer without her talking to him (or with her hating him), but it seemed different this time. He had gotten used to the idea that they were on the right track, in a good place, he didn't know what to do now. It felt like they were suddenly, rapidly moving backwards and he hated it.

Thankfully, not long after he goes to bed that night, he gets a phone call, though not from the Fabray he was hoping to hear from.

"Noah," his mother calls through his door before opening it, "Jessica's on the phone for you." She hands him the phone and adds, "Don't hang up when you're done. I want to talk to her."

"Hello," Puck says.

"Were you in bed already? By eleven on a Friday night?" Jessica questions. May said she'd wake him and she thought that seemed really odd. What teenaged boy goes to bed that early on a weekend night?

"Yeah, I have work tomorrow and it's been a really craptacular week," Puck answers, in a tone that clearly says he didn't think it was any of her business.

Oh, right. The fact that he was no longer a typical teenaged boy should have occurred to her. "Yeah, I can imagine that your week must have been bad," Jessica sympathizes.

"So she told you? Thank God. She hasn't talked to anyone else this week. Not me or my mom or her friends," Puck says, relieved to hear that she had finally talked to someone even if it wasn't him.

Jessica wasn't sure what to tell him about what Quinn said. She called because she wanted to help move things along between them, get them both resolution to this problem sooner. But she knows she has to be careful about what, if any, of Quinn's confidences she betrays. So she asks, "I know you guys kissed and she's been avoiding you since. Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know anymore," Puck admits, "I thought she was just freaking out because she didn't want anything like that to happen right now. But she's been avoiding me for a week now so I don't know if it's that or something bigger."

"What do you mean about her not wanting anything like that to happen?" Jessica asks, needing more clarification before she reveals anything.

"She mentioned it once. When she told me she wanted me to be involved with the pregnancy and decision about the baby she mentioned that she thought that every time us being together came up it just ruined everything. So me being involved was kind of on the condition of us just being in this situation together and that's it- we couldn't be anything else for right now," Puck explains.

"And you're okay with that?" Jessica asks though she's fairly sure she already knows the answer.

"Well…" Puck sighs, frustrated at having to rehash his crappy week, "you got my letter, you know it's not what I want. But it's what Quinn wanted and even though she didn't explain why much, I figured she's got a good reason so, yeah, I'm fine with it."

"Of course you are," Jessica mutters to herself with a smirk. The boy would do _anything_ for her sister- that was crystal clear- and she was glad for it, especially since her sister was having a kid with this guy.

"Huh?" Puck asks, he hadn't heard whatever she said.

"That's good, I said," Jessica lies. Thoughtfully, she adds, "Well, if she told you about it before, then I'm confused. The reason she's been avoiding you is because, as she apparently already told you, she can't let the kiss go anywhere, she can't handle you two right now. So she felt awful for having kissed you because she feels like she's leading you on by doing that- or something like that. But if she already talked to you about putting a moratorium on your romantic involvement, then I'm not sure why she just decided that she'd use my suggestion and lie to you about why she kissed you."

"What is she going to tell me?" Puck asks, because what lie could they possibly have come up with for why Quinn kissed him.

"That her hormones made her do it," Jessica reveals.

Oh. Right. That. "Right. 'Cause that can happen for some women while they're pregnant- getting all turned on easy," Puck recalls.

Jessica laughs, "You're reading pregnancy books too?"

"Skimmed some. My mom made me. That part caught my attention," He answers honestly- even though he knows it would sound better if he said he read them of his own free will.

"Of course it did," Jessica returns with a smirk.

"So what am I supposed to do?" Puck asks, getting back on track and hoping for help.

"I don't know," Jessica responds truthfully with a heavy sigh. She considers, "I thought Quinn was worried she was leading you on because you two had never talked about anything that has ever gone on between you two and she didn't want to confront you about the kiss because she knew telling you it couldn't go anywhere would hurt you and she didn't want to do that. But now that I know that apparently she was clear about what you two couldn't be for now…that reasoning just doesn't make sense and I don't know why she's doing anything anymore."

Well, that sucked. Jessica was pretty much his last hope for some kind of help with whatever was going on with Quinn, he had figured, and if she didn't know anything, he really felt lost.

"I do know," Jessica begins recalling, "once, when I was bugging her about the two of you, she elaborated a bit on why she couldn't handle the idea of figuring out the two of you right now. On top of it just being another big decision besides everything you two have to figure out about the baby, she was worried the status of your relationship would effect what's decided about the baby and didn't think that'd turn out well. She said if you two were together then, no matter what you say or your mom says about being okay about giving the baby away, she knows that she probably couldn't do it if you were together. And if you got together and broke up by the time she has the baby then she worried about giving the baby up out of hurt feelings between you two. So she said she needed to keep things between you platonic and easy because otherwise she was afraid she'd make the wrong choice for your baby's future for the wrong reason and that wouldn't be good for any of you, least of all the baby."

Oh. Suddenly, a lot of thing snapped into place in Puck's head. "Yeah, I kind of figured she had some really smart reason for not wanting to deal with us," Puck says, though he was disappointed that he was right. He was hoping her reasons were stupid and flawed and he'd point it out and then they'd get to ignore the reasons all together, be together.

"I guess, maybe she's still avoiding you because kissing you made her feel like she was on the verge of going down that path she fears will turn out badly for all of you," Jessica offers.

Well, it was a helluva kiss, so Puck couldn't exactly blame her for worrying it would lead to more. He certainly hoped (prayed to/begged God) that it would.

Jessica considers everything she came up with and concludes, "If that's not all of it, it's probably a big part of it. She's been _really_ sensitive about making mistakes lately so she's probably just terrified that when she kissed you she made another one." She advises, "I think that as soon as you tell her everything you told me, everything between you will be fine again, she'll stop freaking out and be fine again."

"So basically, I just have to find a way to talk to her?" Puck clarifies.

"Yep," Jessica answers.

"I've been doing that all week but she's extremely good at hiding from me," Puck returns.

"Well, try harder," Jessica tells him, "I don't know what else to tell you. She needs to talk to you but she's being too stubborn and scared right now so it's up to you to figure out how to get through to her."

Puck sighs and agrees, "Yeah, alright." He doesn't know how he's going to possibly get to her. He really wishes Jessica had some better suggestions.

She warns, "And before you get the idea in your head that it'd be a good idea to go over to our parents house to trap her there and talk to her- don't. You've never met our parents and trust me, you don't want to- especially by barging in to talk to their youngest daughter who you got pregnant."

"I wouldn't do that. Quinn already told me your dad has guns in the house and I don't have a death wish," Puck responds. He had considered that idea, until he remembered what Quinn told him on Christmas Eve about the guns and then he forgot about it completely.

"Well, Puck, good luck. I hope you get to talk to her soon," Jessica offers sincerely.

"Thanks," Puck says grateful for her support even if it wasn't a particularly helpful conversation.

He tells her to hang on to talk to his mom and heads out to the family room to hand the phone over to his mom as per her instructions. He goes back to bed, but like most nights lately he has trouble falling asleep.

Quinn had a point in what she had told her sister, about whether or not the two of them were together would effect what decision is made about the baby. The two of them finally having a romantic relationship again probably would affect the outcome of what they do. Which he hadn't been too concerned about because if it meant that they were more tempted to keep the baby, that was good with him, he wanted that to happen. But he didn't want them to feel like it was the option they had to go with just because they were together. It wasn't right to keep a baby just because they felt like it was the choice they had to make because they were together- that's too much for a relationship to take, it would probably ruin them in the long run. So Quinn had a good point in keeping them apart and he hated that he knew that and that that meant that they definitely couldn't be together for quite a while longer.

-o-o-o-

Puck works all weekend again and goes to school on Monday hoping that Quinn will come up to him, try to get away with the lie she came up with, with Jessica for why she kissed him, he'd set her straight about everything, and they'd finally be fine again.

Of course that didn't happen Monday. So on Tuesday he asked to go to the bathroom toward the end of his second period class (had Kurt pick up his books so his teacher wouldn't know he wasn't coming back if he had taken them with him) and he heads for Quinn's classroom (yes, he had her schedule memorized- for quite some time now). Only, she doesn't come out of the only door the room has. He has no idea how she manages to do that, he waits there until everyone's out of the class and then he goes in the room himself to see that only the teacher is left, she's definitely not hiding out. He knows she's at school today and he would ask her teacher what happened to her but it happens to be one of the many who doesn't like him so he knows he wouldn't get an honest response if he got one at all. This was his best idea though, and he doesn't know what to do now.

He finds Kurt a minute before the bell is supposed to ring. He approaches him at his locker to get his books back, looking as defeated as he feels.

"I take it she somehow evade you," Kurt guesses as he hands Puck his books back.

"Yep," Puck answers.

Kurt has never been Puck's biggest fan. The whole tossing him in the dumpster on a regular basis thing was hard to get past. But he had been seeing a different side to Puck for a while and he hadn't been getting bullied by Puck for even longer so he had been getting past his previous opinion of the guy. So even though they're not exactly friends and Kurt isn't sure if he even cares to be, he can't help but offer his thoroughly hopeless looking glee club comrade, "You should eat lunch with us today. Looking for her again today probably won't get you anywhere and we may be able to come up with some suggestions."

"Yeah?" Puck questions surprised, but he really needs the help so he doesn't wait before agreeing, "Thanks."

At lunch, Puck heads for the table full of glee kids (Kurt, Mercedes, Artie, and Tina) and sits down with his tray. (He feels a little awkward doing this- he's never sat with them without Quinn- which he's pretty sure they all knew was his reason for being there each of those times.)

"Guys," Kurt begins as soon as he sits down, "it is as we feared. Quinn is indeed avoiding Puck."

"B-But I bet on January," Artie stutters helplessly. Did this mean he'd most definitely lose his thirty dollars?

"Yes and if any of us would like to hang on to our money-"

"Or see things set right," Tina interjects. She got the message Kurt was going to end with and she didn't see why they would pretend that they were just in this for their own gain. They cared what happened between their fellow glee club members and wanted things between them to turn out alright.

"We need to help Puck find a way to talk to Quinn because she's already managed to avoid his sneaky attempt of trapping her outside of her second period class today," Kurt finishes.

(Actually, Quinn had just gotten lucky with that. While Puck had lied to get out of class saying he had needed to go to the bathroom, Quinn had said the same thing to her teacher a minute before hand in her own class and she wasn't lying. Her second period teacher happened to be a woman, a mother, and she understood what it was like to be pregnant. Plus she liked Quinn so she tended to let her out whenever she wanted and if there was less than ten minutes left of class she always insisted she take her books with her. It was one of the very few perks of being at school pregnant.)

The first ten minutes of the ensuing discussion consists almost entirely of ideas that are not at all feasible. Things don't get any better when Mike and Matt join them.

"I cannot hide in her back seat and kidnap her. Have you seen her car? It's way too small for me to be able to hide in the backseat," Puck shoots down. And on second thought, he probably should have been shooting down Matt's idea for more than just not being able to fit in her backseat.

As Matt starts to argue, Tina and Mercedes both pipe up with new suggestions, all three of them talking over each other as Rachel, with a reluctant looking Finn in tow, approach the two empty seats in between Artie and Matt. Rachel takes the seat next to Artie with a chipper, "Hi everyone," that goes unnoticed in the uproar. She's smiling hard, but it fades for a second as she turns back to see Finn hesitating, and orders firmly, "Sit down." (She was through with this whole not socializing with everyone. She had just gotten on most of their good sides and she wasn't going to let that go just because she was with Finn now and he was being awkward about hanging out with _everyone_ still.)

"One at a time," Kurt orders. Everyone talking at once had become too common and it was giving him a headache. "Tina," he says, letting her go first.

She smiles as she suggests, "You could have Kelyn call her panicked and saying something happened to you and then, when she gets to the hospital, you could-"

"Whoa," Puck cuts off, "first, I don't think lying like that would go over well. It'd probably just piss her off. And more importantly, Kelyn won't lie for me. Not without me paying her to at least and she's expensive and I don't have that kind of money to spare right now."

Rachel had been trying to catch on, but she's not getting it and she wants to so she asks Artie quietly, "What's going on?"

"We're trying to figure out a way for Puck to talk to Quinn because she's been avoiding him for over a week now…and she's kind of been avoiding us too," Artie explains.

"I don't think she's been avoiding me," Rachel considers, "we hung out last week."

Rachel wasn't talking as quietly as she though and catches Puck's attention.

"Yeah, she hung out with us on Saturday, but she didn't really talk to us much about anything. So it's kind of like she's avoiding us, but not entirely and when she's with us she's still kind of…distant," Artie elaborates. He asks curiously, "Was that how she was with you too?"

Regretfully, Rachel answers, "I'm not sure. I had some personal things I needed to talk to her about…I was being selfish, I didn't even notice that she barely said anything about herself the entire night."

Finn takes her hand reassuringly.

"I'm sure it wasn't like that," Artie offers kindly, "when she was with us, she kept asking us questions to distract us from talking to her about her."

"I didn't know," Puck says, just as confused as ever, "that she was pretending with all of you. I just thought she was avoiding being around you too."

Glancing around at everyone else, Mercedes sees that since no one else is venturing it (though they're clearly just as puzzled), "Does that mean something?"

Puck sighs heavily, rubs his tired eyes with his hands and tells them honestly, "I don't know."

Mike, who was sitting on his left, pats him awkwardly on the back.

A sudden, loud shriek startles everyone from their ever increasing worry about what's going on. It's Mercedes. "Oh Lord," she exclaims, "I passed!" She turns around to look at the person, her tutor, who was holding her test out in front of her.

"Congratulations. I knew you could do it," Sean says happily.

She takes the test from him, marveling at the large "B" written at the top of the page, and asks, "How did you get this? Mr. Eldrige said that he didn't have them graded yet."

Sean shrugs, like it wasn't a big deal, "He likes me so he did me a favor. I knew how eager you were to know how you did."

"Uh-huh," Mercedes says distractedly. Still excited, she repeats, "I passed, I passed, I passed," as she hugs both Kurt and Tina next to her. "Thank you," she says turning back to Sean. "Now I'll definitely have a passing grade for Regionals and I'll be able to participate-"

"You were failing a class and in danger of not being able to compete?" Rachel interrupts, stunned. "Don't you think that's something you should have informed me of as glee captain-". She's about to continue on, really getting into chastising Mercedes, but she fells the hand holding hers squeeze a little and she glances at the person holding it. She can read Finn pretty well and she gets the look he's giving her. She redirects herself saying, "I mean, congratulations Mercedes. I'm glad you passed your test."

"Thank you," Mercedes says politely (it was nice that Rachel changed tactics- and not typical so she wasn't going to do anything to discourage the positive change).

Everyone started chiming in and Mercedes thanked them all before turning to Sean and saying, "I couldn't have done it without your help. And I probably won't be doing again unless you keep tutoring me. You're going to right?"

"As long as you'd like," he promises. He suddenly seems to notice that they have everyone's eyes on them and meets them with a sheepish smile. He had thought he'd seen Mercedes' whole club sitting with her, but he's struck by the absence of one person who had been on his mind a bit lately. It's probably not his place to ask, but he was getting really curious now so he ventures to the table at large, "Uh, is everything okay with Quinn?"

Noticing the looks from most of the table, Mercedes is quick to say, "I didn't say anything to him."

"Why do you ask?" Kurt returns.

"Well, she's not with you guys now, though everyone else from your club seems to be here and, I TA for the office third period and it seems like she sees Ms. Pillsbury a lot. I mean, I know she has some big stuff going on that would probably give her reason to see a guidance counselor, but she was in last week and yesterday so…I just wanted to make sure nothing was wrong," Sean explains.

Everyone looks to Puck- they weren't sure if the bit about Ms. Pillsbury meant something or not (though a few of them thought they knew a bit about it- hence why Rachel whispered to Finn). Answering Sean's question and everyone's questioning looks, Puck explains one of the few things he's actually been pretty sure about in the last few days, "Quinn's seeing Ms. Pillsbury a lot because she's helping her with some academic stuff. She found her some way to take classes for free at the University of Findlay next year, so she's trying to help her get in on that, and then, to make that work in case she does get into the program, she had to change classes this term." Since everyone still seems concerned, he decides to make things clearer adding, "Her seeing Ms. Pillsbury has nothing to do with everything else. I'm pretty sure of that."

Puck doubts that Quinn would tell Ms. Pillsbury anything that was going on with them. But, if she showed up there both times she's gotten a note to in the last couple of weeks, weren't chances that she would again? And without being suspicious like she would if any of their glee-mates were to suddenly ask her to be in a specific place at a specific time? He has no idea if Ms. Pillsbury would help, but it's a viable idea to involve her and he needs to try everything he can think of.

"I've gotta go," he says suddenly as he stands up. "Thanks for the help," he offers to everyone as he hurries away from the table and toward the guidance counselor's office.

Only, when he gets there, the door is locked and the light is off. He hopes she's just at lunch, but she hasn't returned by the time the bell to go to class has rung. Although, she's staff, she doesn't really have to pay much attention to the bell and he hopes she's just taking a long lunch. But she's not, which becomes clear when he stops by her office again and it's still empty and dark after sixth period.

So Puck heads for Mr. Schue, because he figures he's got to know where Ms. Pillsbury is.

"She's at a district conference for the rest of the day, but she'll be back tomorrow," Mr. Shue tells him.

Damn. He just couldn't catch a break today.

"Is there anything I can help with?" Mr. Schue offers.

Well, if Ms. Pillsbury didn't agree to his entrapment plan, maybe she wouldn't be suspicious of Mr. Schue and he could use him instead (though he had a feeling she wouldn't like him letting Mr. Shcue in on everything). "Maybe. But not right now. I'll let you know," Puck answers.

"Okay," Mr. Schue accepts- he doesn't like to pressure people.

"If you see any of the rest of the club today, can you let them know that practice is canceled?" Mr. Schue asks.

"Sure," Puck agrees, "Why is it though?" It had been canceled all last week because Mr. Schue was sick, but he was standing before him fine now so that couldn't still be the reason.

"Coach Sylvester has managed to reserve the choir room due to… a mix up in the office and her usual underhandedness. I tried to fight it, but got nowhere so we'll just meet for extra long on Thursday," Mr. Schue explains. He adds knowingly, "I understand if you can't stay the whole time Thursday though. Don't worry about it if you have to leave for work."

"Thanks," Puck says, for everything before dejectedly continuing on with his day. Nothing seemed to be going his way lately.

-o-o-o-

Perhaps the universe or God or fate felt bad for so many things not working out for Puck lately, because that Tuesday afternoon things started to get a little bit better for him (though not with Quinn- as he would have hoped).

It started with him calling Miguel (one of Hank's guys that he'd been working with the past few days and was supposed to work with today) to find out where he should meet him and Miguel explaining that, since Puck wasn't supposed to meet him until four, he had scheduled to not be working again (he was at the dentist) himself until four. Thus Puck was left with an hour and a half free. He should have been pissed about missing out on a potential extra hour and a half of pay, but honestly, after the crappy way his life had been going lately, he was grateful for the break.

He can't head home though. Kelyn could catch him since, with his new schedule, she had been getting picked up and babysat by their neighbor. And if Kelyn found out he didn't have to work and didn't pick her up, she'd be really mad with him (which he couldn't bear- especially right now).

So Puck heads to his local Best Buy intent on spending some time trying out whatever new game he could. (Hopefully something violent so he could work out some of his usual aggression in addition to his incredible frustration of late.)

Puck is fishing through a clearance bin of Xbox games when he gets quite a surprise. "Hey," he hears from his left and to say he's shocked to see that Finn is the one standing four feet to his left and the one who greeted him like it was a normal thing to do, would be a big understatement.

"Hey," he returns, trying not to read anything into this just in case it's not going to go anywhere.

Finn approaches him, hands in his pockets, "So…" he draws out, seeming uncertain about what to say, "anything good?" He gestures to the bin of clearance games and isn't very happy with himself for what he ended up saying- seemed kind of lame.

"Not really," Puck answers honestly, "but I'm down to two games so almost anything seems better than the same old stuff." He sighs a little and says, considering a thought that's crossed his mind many times, "I should probably just sell it all though. I could get some decent money out of it even if my mom did buy it used."

Finn musters his courage and says what he had hoped would come out the first time he opened his mouth. "I was kind of hoping we could talk," he says, surprising Puck even more than he had with his simple greeting, "like, about everything."

"Sure," Puck responds immediately. He was the one who screwed everything up, he certainly wasn't going to pass up an opportunity that seemed like it could help fix it.

Finn looks around and suggests, "Do you wanna go somewhere else? Like across the parking lot to Arby's? It should probably be pretty empty." Realizing that his last sentence might not make sense outside of his own head, he adds quickly, "I mean- I was going to talk to you sooner, but I didn't want to at school because the second I walk up to you it'd spread around school and before I even said five words everyone would probably know. So, I don't know about you, but I'm really tired of people talking about me and us and stuff. I don't care what they end up thinking, I just wanted to talk first without everyone knowing."

"Yeah, that…sounds good," Puck offers, though he wasn't quite sure he followed Finn's logic or managed to figure out what his intent is with talking.

They cross the parking lot in silence. Though all of the tables are free in Arby's they proceed past all of them to sit in a booth towards the back.

Puck figures that Finn's the one who wanted to talk so he probably shouldn't press his luck and try to talk about certain things and instead just stay and wait and see where Finn wants to take this.

Finn jiggles his leg nervously. It was strange to feel so weird around his best friend. After a beat of silence, he realizes that there's no way to ease into what he wanted to say so he dives in, "I'm not mad anymore."

"Seriously?" Puck checks, he found it unexpected that Finn was just suddenly not mad about everything at all anymore.

"Yeah," Finn confirms, "I hadn't actually really been mad about it for a while. I kind of forgot about it almost. There was a bunch of other stuff going on in my life like screwing up with Rachel, and my mom's dating Kurt's dad-"

"Your mom's dating?" Puck's quick to interject, shocked.

"Yeah, I know, it's weird. Besides her brief interest in that lawn guy, she hasn't dated at all and then suddenly one day she's telling me she's been with Burt for a month and then the next day she's talking about us moving in with him," Finn rants. He sighs, "Which I reacted to like a real jerk, but it just…threw me. They're not moving in together for now, not yet at least, but she's really serious about him."

"It's so weird to think of your mom dating. That's like…my mom dating," Puck comments. Carol was like a second mom to him and she had always been alone, kind of like his mom had been since his dad left. To think she was actually dating, it seemed so foreign.

"I know," Finn exclaims. "It was just happening so fast, I reacted like a jackass and, well, that wasn't good but at least it made things slow down a little." He continues, clearly regretful of his actions, "And to make things worse, I had been a jerk and screwed up with Rachel like, right before my mom told me about all this stuff so I just… I didn't do well with any of it." Remembering why they were here, he adds, "And with all of that going on, I kind of wasn't mad at you. I had too much else to deal with. And I realized that recently, that with everything else going on I hadn't been mad in a while. But it was pretty big deal, right? So I started to think about why I just wouldn't be mad all of a sudden when other stuff came up in my life."

Finn leaning forward on his elbows on the table a little, looks thoughtful as he says, "I was trying to figure that out for a while- probably longer than it should have taken me- and then, over break, something came to me thanks to me thinking Rachel was with this other guy- Eli- which she wasn't actually. What if the situation was reversed? And not like, completely, because that would be-" Finn stops himself. He was losing the point and he could tell so he restarts, explaining, "Like, what if Quinn was never in the picture and, when you started dating Rachel a while back, what if that was for real- she told me it was just to make me and Quinn jealous- and what if it didn't end so quickly? What would I do if my best friend was dating the girl I love? And I like to think that the first thing I'd do is tell you I love her, but…I don't know. When you were dating her, it totally made me jealous like she wanted. Even though I was with Quinn and thought she was pregnant with my kid, I hated that you were with Rachel and…honestly, I kinda felt like punching you most of the time. So I don't know if I would have said anything if I was in your place, but I know that if I was, and Rachel was the girl you were with, I'd do anything to be with her. You said you love Quinn, right?" Finn asks though he knows the answer (that had become plain as day).

"Yeah," Puck confirms.

Finn nods, "Then I can't blame you for what you did because I know, that for the girl I love, I'd do anything too- even something that hurts my best friend."

"I really never wanted you to get hurt and I didn't mean for it to turn out that way at all," Puck's quick to say (again).

"I know," Finn assures. "I was pretty mad there at first, but eventually I remembered that. We've been friends a long time, I know you wouldn't screw me over on purpose." He kind of thought he'd find a better way to mention it, but he might not get a better chance than right now so Finn continues, "And I know Quinn wouldn't either. I understand why she did most of the stuff she did too. Some of it though, that I'm not so clear on, I kinda just figure that I don't understand cause she's a girl and you know, girls. But I'm cool with her too and I'd like to tell her that, but today, it sounded like she's avoiding everyone so I don't know how I'm going to get the chance."

"Yeah," Puck agrees solemnly, the lack of progress from the day still eating away at him.

He didn't know if they were back at a place where they would talk about this type of thing, but he wanted to be, so Finn asks tentatively, "Do you wanna, like, talk about that? Whatever's going on?"

Puck doesn't want to keep stuff from his newly-returned best friend, but more than anything he wanted to forget about it right now, just for a little while. "Actually, I was just going in to Best Buy before I have to go to work because I wanted to play something and hopefully forget about all of it for a little while."

'That's cool," Finn accepts. He offers, "You'll figure out whatever it is though. Even if I really didn't want to know for a while there, I've noticed how well you've been doing with everything, with her." He smiles a little and adds, "And when you two are talking again, can you tell her I'd like to talk to her? I don't want to mention anything at school 'cause, you know-"

"People watching, talking," Puck finishes.

"Yeah, so if you let her know, maybe we could figure out a way to talk without the whole student body watching," Finn concludes.

"I'll tell her," Puck promises. He adds quietly, feeling like talking to her may be a long way off, "Hopefully."

That really didn't sound good. Finn decides that perhaps it would be best to help Puck in his mission to forget whatever was going on for a little while. He smiles as he suggests, "I don't know about you, but I could really go for a second lunch. You interested? Or do you not have time before you have to go to work?"

"No, I have time. And I could always eat," he says as he slides out of the booth and heads for the counter to order with Finn following.

"So what's this job you have anyway?" Finn asks, hoping to catch up on Puck's life while keeping with his distraction objective.

Fifteen minutes and half way through a second lunch later, after Puck's finished telling Finn what his job entails, what it could get him, and how he stumbled into it, Finn remarks, "Man, that's sweet. I wish I could get in on something that would set me up with a career right out of high school." Reflectively, he adds, "Though I guess the fact that I did really bad in shop freshman year definitely rules out anything like your job."

"Maybe not," Puck offers, because there was a lot of stuff his job required that was nothing like their shop class. "But I thought you were trying to go to college though?" Puck asks, because last time he and Finn had talked, that had still been a big goal of Finn's (a goal that mostly stemmed from the fact that his dad had started a college fund for him before he was born and his mom had kept trying to add as much as she could to it over the years- though it didn't have a lot of money in it still).

"Yeah, I guess," Finn responds, non-committal. He expands, "I don't really know what I'm going to do now. I mean, I have Rachel to think about and what if things go bad at some point before graduation for my mom and Burt? I don't want that to happen to her, she seems really happy with him, but if it did, I couldn't just leave her here all alone and go off to college. So…I don't know, I'll worry about it next year."

Puck nods, though he can't really relate. He doesn't have the luxury of putting off his decisions.

Seeing that Puck seems caught up in his own thoughts and figuring he was probably thinking about whatever was going on with him and Quinn, Finn tries to distract him again saying something he had planned on saving for later. "You know, I feel awful that I missed your birthday. I'm sorry I didn't come. I didn't have a good reason for missing it."

"Yeah, you did," Puck insists. After what he did, he felt like everything and more than Finn did would be completely justified.

"Nah," Finn brushes off, "but maybe we could hang out sometime soon and sort of make up for it. And you know, other missed time."

"Sure. I work all day on the weekends now, but I'm free most nights," Puck suggests.

Finn, embarrassed, admits, "Uh, yeah, I can't really make a specific plan right now. I don't have the calendar Rachel gave me that has all of the times I'm expected to spend with her scheduled on it. I'll need to check it before we can plan something."

Puck really wants to make fun of Finn for how obviously whipped he is and normally he would, but for one, if he were to think about it he'd probably figure out that he's whipped too (and for a girl he's not even with), and two, he's not sure their friendship is back in a place where it's okay to do that.

Trying to quickly change the topic so Puck doesn't get the chance to rightly make fun of him for having to consult a girlfriend-made calendar (at least she went with a sports car themed calendar this time instead of cats again), Finn adds just thinking of it, "Oh, and do you know of anything Kurt's like…into or that I could do for him? With the whole our parents might move in together thing, I kinda screwed up a little with him too. I apologized and I think we're cool, but I thought I should do something extra."

"What happened?" Puck asks curiously. He hadn't noticed anything up with Kurt lately or between Kurt and Finn- although he had been more than a little preoccupied by his own problems.

With a little bit of shame and a good amount of regret, Finn explains, "Well, Kurt apparently knew about our parents dating from the beginning and you know when I found out about it I was already surprised and that he didn't tell me, I don't know it just made it all seem worse. It was like I was being left out of knowing because they didn't think I could handle it. Which, of course, I proved I couldn't really- like an ass. But anyway, when my mom and Burt sprung it on me and Kurt that they wanted to move in together, I kind of snapped- again. I had already acted like a jerk to my mom when she told me she had been dating Burt and her and Burt and Kurt had all been keeping it from me. Then….well, I know I should have done what Kurt did. He seemed really shocked by the announcement, but he smiled and tried to be happy and said nice stuff to me and my mom about moving in. And I just sat there thinking of all the reasons I didn't want to move. Then Burt commented how they would have to do a little remodeling upstairs on their guestroom cause he wanted to make it equal in size and everything to Kurt's bedroom- which was really nice of him- but then he said that while they fix it up I could just share Kurt's room and that's when I lost it. And it wasn't about Kurt or sharing a room with him- though starting my rant about refusing to move right after Burt said that did kinda make it seem that way. I told Kurt all that, that it wasn't about him, that it was just all too much, too fast for me. I can't leave my house, it's one of very few things I have left of my dad. And Kurt seemed to get it, said he hadn't been totally on board with changing some stuff about their house that his mom had done, but he helped his dad remodel it a couple of years ago, because they needed to move on and let go and he didn't think it was right that everyone had expected me to do that in a day or a week when he and his dad had taken years to go through their process of moving on in their remolding. So he was cool about it, but I still feel like things are kinda weird between us and like he might think that I wouldn't want to share a room with him because I know he has a crush on me."

"But you wouldn't want to for that reason right?" Puck checks.

"Well no," Finn admits, "it'd be weird to have to share a room with anyone that has a crush on you- girl or guy. And it'd be weird for them too- to have to live with their crush. So, no, I don't really want to do it, but I guess I would for my mom. And also for my mom, I already smoothed things over with Burt. He's a pretty cool guy. And I'm trying to be okay with the idea of leaving our house and getting rid of some of my dad's stuff when we do, but I still feel like I need to make things a bit better with Kurt."

Puck sighs. He had been considering it, but he was really grasping at straws to come up with anything Kurt could like. He had ideas, but he wasn't at all confident in them and kind of thought some could be taken offensively (like a gift certificate for a manicure). So he offers, unable to think of anything else, "I don't know if a gift would really be the right thing. I mean, in the long run if your mom and Burt are really serious, maybe it'd be best if you just try to become like, really good friends with him. Hang out with him and stuff. Maybe help him get a date so he finishes getting over his crush on you."

Finn considers it and decides, "Yeah, that's probably a really good idea."

Puck checks his phone and says regretfully, "I've really got to head to work." He stands and grabs his tray as he says, "I'm really glad we're cool again. And I'm so sorry I caused us not to be. It won't happen again."

"I know. Best friends for life, right," Finn responds with smile and offering his fist for their usual fist-bump.

Puck returns the fist bump and confirms, "Right."

Finn, looking like he's having an internal debate (because he is), stops Puck after he gets a few steps away saying, "Wait." After Puck dumps the trash off his tray and places it on the trashcan, turns and waits as Finn said. Finn, still unsure if he's doing the right thing, continues, "I don't know if I should say anything, but Rachel kind of told me something that Quinn told her and…I know why she's been seeing Ms. Pillsbury a bunch lately. She's…she's made appointments with adoption agencies. I think it was something that Quinn told Rachel as like a secret, so I probably shouldn't be telling you, but I thought you have a right to know."

So while she had been avoiding him she had been moving forward with all that? And she wasn't going to tell him just because of one kiss she regretted or whatever? Puck didn't know what to make of that…though the fact that this was what she had been seeing Ms. Pillsbury about could actually help him put his plan in effect. "Thanks," he tells Finn gratefully, "that's good to know. I mean, I knew she was going to check out some agencies, but I didn't know that that's what she had been doing lately- since she's avoiding me and all."

"But-" Finn begins. He's not sure if he should be saying this either, but he doesn't understand and he wants to be back to knowing his best friend like the brother he's always considered him to be. So after only a second's hesitation, he proceeds, "I thought you wanted her? I mean, both hers- Quinn and the baby."

"Yeah," Puck confirms, stuffing his hands in his pockets and glancing towards his feet. He looks back up and admits to his reality, "But I also want what's right and we haven't figured out if what I want and what's right are the same things yet. And right now, with her avoiding me, I don't know if _we'll_ be figuring out anything anymore." Before Finn can say anything reassuring or sympathetic or make any kind of response at all, Puck adds, "And I've really got to go or I'll be late. It was good talking. Check your girlfriend's calendar so you can figure out a time you'll be free to hang out."

Finn would take slight offense to Puck's last sentence…if it weren't completely true. "Later," he calls and adds not knowing what else he can do for his friend and the situation he's in that he doesn't really understand, "And good luck."

Puck heads to work happy to have his best friend back, thrilled that he's been forgiven, but still feeling completely hopeless that he'd ever get to talk to Quinn again.

-o-o-o-

First thing Wednesday morning, Puck heads for the guidance counselor's office.

"Mr. Puckerman," Ms. Pillsbury greets him, startled. She's even more surprised when he sits down. He always seemed to hate any time he spent in her office so seeing him come in and sit down of his own volition was unexpected to say the least. "What can I do for you that brought you here of your own free will today?"

"I need you to help me talk to Quinn," Puck says, getting right to the point.

"Okay," Ms. Pillsbury responds, catching up and getting over her shock. "Are you having communication issues? Would you like me to act as a mediator for the two of you to have an open and honest conversation?"

"No," Puck shoots down immediately, completely hating that idea. He explains, "Quinn has been avoiding me, but while she'd be suspicious of anyone in glee club trying to get her in a particular place at a particular time, she won't be suspicious of getting a note from you to come here. So I need you to send her one and then when she gets here, you leave, I come in, and she's forced to finally talk to me. Okay?"

Ms. Pillsbury chews her lip. No, that idea was not okay with her. But a student who had never willingly talked to her just came in her office asking for help so she didn't want to outright refuse him. "Well," she considers, "I don't feel comfortable simply agreeing to that. Perhaps you'd like to tell me why she's avoiding you."

"If she hasn't told you, I don't think she'd want me to. And since she's already avoiding me, I'm not going to do absolutely anything that could possibly get her pissed at me. I don't want things to get worse," Puck rationalizes his choice not to explain. He knew he had a good reason for not telling Ms. Pillsbury, but in addition to it, he just didn't want to talk about it.

"Okay," Ms. Pillsbury accepts. She pauses, considering where to go from here.

Puck's not sure that Ms. Pillsbury is going to help him and he doesn't have long before his first class starts (not that he cares about being late really, but something about this office makes him really uncomfortable). So, in an effort to speed this along, he mentions, "Look, I found out that Quinn's been seeing you lately to set up appointments with adoption agencies. I need to talk to her about that. It's my kid too, I should be in on the decision of what we're going to do. But she's avoiding me for a really stupid reason that I could fix if I could just talk to her for a minute so I need some help getting her to talk to me. I'm pretty sure that she won't be mad at you for helping me, she'll feel better after we talk and she'll probably be grateful that someone forced her to do something that she's been to stubborn to do."

"Well," Ms. Pillsbury mulls over. She doesn't think it's nice to trick someone into something- especially to do so to a student who's trust she's gained and is trying to keep. But she did make appointments for Quinn with some local agencies and Puck had a point. He deserved to have a say in what happened to his child and if Quinn wasn't talking to him, then that needed to be rectified. Ideally, she wanted a lot more information on the situation, but she didn't see herself getting it this time and she wanted gain Puck's trust as well so…she finds herself agreeing. "Okay, I will help you talk to Quinn, but on one condition," she lays out, "I know you don't want to talk to me. About anything. You've ignored my many offers to talk and it is your choice so that's fine. But you have some very big things going on in your life right now and I would really like to talk to you about everything- at least once, even if it's just to confirm that you have other people you're talking to about everything that's going on in your life right now. And I want this one session we have to occur before I help you with Quinn. Deal?"

That sounds awful to Puck. He doesn't want to talk about everything with anyone else. He's got enough of that, as far as he's concerned. But the simple truth is that he'd do anything for Quinn, and right now she needs him to find a way to talk to her and make things okay because she's not doing it on her own. So, he responds, "Deal. But I really need to talk to her, it's almost been two weeks since she's spoken to me so we need to get this session over quick."

"I could do it today," Ms. Pillsbury offers agreeably. But then she checks Puck's schedule to look for a time to take him out of class and retracts, "Although, I'm not willing to take you out of any of your classes. It looks like your grades have been improving and I don't want to jeopardize that by taking you out of class unnecessarily. How about after school? Or before school tomorrow morning? Or lunch, I could do lunch?"

They settle on lunch since Puck works after school and today was the earliest he had ever managed to make it to school (and he only got there about ten minutes before the warning bell). Though, Puck is dejected to learn that Quinn has an arrangement with Ms. Pillsbury- she only gets taken out of her third period class because it was her easiest. Ms. Pillsbury thinks Quinn would either think something was up or think that something bad was going on if she pulled her out of class at any other time. It's only one more day and he's already waited so long and this whole thing is kind of dependent on Ms. Pillsbury so Puck is forced to go along with waiting.

This is probably the only day ever that lunch has come too quickly for Puck. But he knows he's got to go through with this to get what he wants so he picks up some food from the cafeteria, stops by the table that the glee kids are slowly filling and lets them know he's putting a plan into action, and heads for the guidance counselor's office.

Puck dives into his lunch as soon as he's sitting across from Ms. Pillsbury (who appears to be cleaning her lunch- weird). He figures, he can't be required to talk much if his mouth is full so he's hoping to make his lunch last the whole break.

"So, Puck," Ms. Pillsbury begins as she scrubs a grape, "who have you been getting help and support from lately? Who have you been talking to about everything?"

"My mom, this lady named Addie- she's kind of a friend to both me and Quinn, and kind of my boss a little bit," Puck lists off easily, succinctly.

"That's great," Ms. Pillsbury comments, surprised- she thought Puck was more of a closed book, so she's glad to hear he has a few people he's turning to right now. "How has your mom dealt with everything?" she asks, hoping it was much better than Quinn's parents.

"She's been pretty awesome. She's been helping both of us by talking to us about everything, she's been really trying to make Quinn feel like we're her family now, and she totally didn't care that Quinn's not Jewish, which was a pretty big thing for her. So, yeah, she's just been awesome- really supportive," Puck answers and as he recaps how cool his mom has been about everything, he thinks for the hundredth time that he's really got to do something really good for her as thanks.

Emma's relieved to hear that. Quinn didn't like talking about anything but the future with her, but how her parents took the news and are still taking it is so awful. She's glad to hear that though Quinn's parents abandoned her, Puck's mom seemed to recognize what both kids need- a family and support. "That's wonderful," she says supportively. "And how are things with Finn?" she asks because she knows there haven't been any more fights, but she's not sure they've made up either. She could probably know if there was still tension between them in glee club, but she hadn't exactly been talking to the glee club advisor much of late.

"Great actually. He forgave me. He told me that just yesterday so we're cool now," Puck answers continuing to make sure he actually answers her question, but without giving her so much that he gives her more questions to ask.

Though it was definitely great that Puck and Finn made up, honestly Emma was a little disappointed that that was Puck's response right now. She had thought that that the rift between them would be something to discuss- an in to discussing Puck's life at the moment. But it turned out to fail in that capacity like every question before it. "That's wonderful that you've made up," she says. She takes a bite of her sandwich as a way to take a second to consider what she could ask next. She hates that she's going with something this broad, and this soon into lunch, but after she's finished chewing Emma ends up asking, "So how do you feel you've been dealing with everything?"

Honestly, Puck offers, "Kinda bad at first. I mean, not bad exactly. I got how serious it is and everything. But… I guess I was just kind of stupid about it at first. It's not exactly habit for me to react to anything smartly. But I've been getting better and I think I'm dealing with it pretty well now."

Okay, maybe it wasn't such a bad question. Maybe it might just be her way to get him to start talking more. Emma persists, "How has how you've dealt with the situation changed? For example, since you were dealing with it poorly at the start, what were some specific things you did to change that to deal with it better?"

Puck shrugs (he didn't really like this question, he didn't want to give details) and tries to respond casually, "Just you know, being more responsible. I stopped going out and partying. I got a job. Though Quinn said that you helped her get something so there won't be any medical expenses, and depending on what ends up happening we might not have any more stuff to pay for, but just in case, you know, I figured it'd be good to have some money saved. Then you know, Quinn's going to be on her own soon no matter what so I figure I should be trying to help her out with that since I'm kind of responsible for her getting pregnant and all this bad stuff happening to her because of it."

Emma was impressed. Puck wasn't the first student she had talked to who had gotten a girl pregnant and in her experience it tended to take the boys in the situation a while to realize the gravity of the situation they had gotten in. But even if he had, in his words, handled things badly at first, he seemed to have stepped up to deal with the situation as best as possible fairly quickly. "You know Puck, I'm very proud of you and I hope you're proud of yourself because you've really seemed to grow into a responsible, mature adult."

He's pretty sure that that was a compliment (although it also kind of sounded like a pep talk) and his mom had him well schooled in how to respond to something like that (she used a system of slapping him upside the head). "Thank you," he replies and hopes that the compliment signaled the end of the conversation and she was going to let him go.

Emma only has one more topic she wants to ask him about and she had been hoping it would come up naturally in discussion and he'd just voluntarily talk about it because she knows that asking may not go over well with Puck (though he seems a little less guarded than she expected). "Now I know you may not want to discuss this," she prefaces, "but I feel it's very important for us to discuss…what do you want to do about the baby? I know that you and Quinn are going to make a decision together, but what do _you _want to do?"

Puck certainly doesn't like that question- at all. But if he doesn't answer all of her questions (at least somewhat), will she claim that he's not holding up his end of the bargain and not go through with hers? If he were her, it's what he would do. No point doing something for nothing. And he needs Quinn to be talking to him again, to be around him again, so he knows he should probably play it safe and answer her question no matter how much he doesn't want to. Still, that doesn't mean he has to go about this easily. "I don't think that's a fair question," he tells her honestly, "we are making a decision _together_ so considering just what_ I_ want, or talking about it, is pointless. Besides, it's one of those situations where _wants_ are less important than other stuff." He sighs and adds, "I will kinda answer your question anyway though. On one condition- you don't get to ask me any more questions about it. I answer, you move on to something else or just let me go."

Emma had low expectations going into this whole session and particularly this question and counts herself lucky that he's going to answer at all (a habit of having woefully low expectations was something she really should have mentioned to the psychiatrist she had briefly been seeing). So she accepts, "Agreed."

He didn't like talking about this, but then again it was a thought stuck in his head for months now and he still hadn't really managed to accept it. Saying it out loud probably couldn't hurt any. Puck lays out the situation as he sees it, "Okay so, my dad walked out on me and my mom and my sister a while ago. And like, he didn't just divorce her and not fight for shared custody. He really just stopped caring or wanting to be in any of our lives at all. I know we have to make a decision about the baby by what's best for her and I know we're in high school and probably not even close to being ready for the responsibility of having a kid. The thought of giving her up…makes me feel like my dad. I know it's not the same. I'd be doing what's best for her- probably- and he didn't give a damn if what he was doing was good or bad for me and my sister. But it makes me feel like my dad anyway, like I'd be abandoning her, because isn't that what a lot of adopted kids think? That their biological parents abandoned them? Me not feeling like my dad isn't a good enough reason to keep her though. So I'm just trying to accept that doing the right thing by her, seems like it's going to mean feeling like my dad for the rest of my life- as irrational as that feeling is."

"Puck," Emma begins, "I'm not going to ask you to discuss anything you just said- I'm not going to ask you anything about it at all as per our agreement. But I would like to say something." Emma pauses, waiting for him to object because she knows she is kind of bending their agreement. After a beat, when he doesn't say anything (he didn't know he could stop her- in his experience it was hard to stop a woman from saying something she wanted you to hear), she proceeds with a warm smile, "I think you've grown into a very honorable young man. I know you've had some issues in the past with anger and I think that stemmed from your father leaving, but you've managed to over come that in a rather short amount of time. I also think that your dad leaving hasn't had as negative of an effect on you as it could have. I think that lately you've worked extremely hard and you've turned all the scars he left you with into positive attributes. Like your drive to be responsible and to be present for those you care about and your self- awareness and your willingness to sacrifice. Maybe you will feel like your dad if you give the baby up for adoption, but I don't think that will last forever. First of all, because if you do, do that I'm going to strongly recommend that both you and Quinn seek counseling. It's a very hard thing to do so I think you'll both need some psychological support. And second of all, it's true that many adopted children do feel abandoned by their biological parents, but if you leave a letter with her or if you ever get to meet her, she'll easily see that that's not the case and she'd never feel the way about you, that you do about your dad. It's not the same situation, and I believe that eventually it will stop feeling that way- even if that seems impossible to you now."

Counseling? He didn't like the sound of that. But as for the rest of what Ms. Pillsbury said, Puck can't help but be touched by it (not that he's going to let anyone know that). Even if he's been doing some good lately, given that he got a girl pregnant and had a whole slew of crimes before that (okay, and a few during), he still assumed everyone saw him as a screw up who just happened to get a few things right. (He still thought of himself that way majority of the time.) So it was nice that someone's label of him had changed (an authority figure no less). That someone saw that now he's a guy who had some trouble _in the past_, but who was making a lot of progress toward becoming a good man.

He doesn't want to respond seriously though. He feels weird about doing that (because he doesn't like being vulnerable). So he says a quick, "Thanks," and continues lightly with a smirk, "if I knew coming here would be such an ego boost I would have shown up all those times you wanted me to."

"Well, I believe in honesty with students- about the good and the bad," Emma responds, playing along into the nice, light transition because she was aware that they had covered quite. Plus it allows her to conveniently get to something else she wanted to mention, "And speaking of the bad…well, not bad, but not so good either. I noticed that your grades improved by the end of last term. You didn't have anything below a C-. So what is this I'm hearing from your chemistry teacher about already having assignments not turned only eight days into this semester?"

Oh. Whoops. Puck had completely forgotten about that. He tries to make excuses- he had just had to let some things go lately because he'd been busy with work, Artie hadn't been able to tutor him yet, he had been busy dealing with this Quinn thing (and wouldn't be once she helped him- he felt the need to work that in), etc. In the end she says that she hopes he'll continue working hard in all of his classes this term that way he won't be in danger of not graduating on time. Then, she does something really nice and lets him go even though they have ten whole minutes of lunch left that she could continue to probe him during (she figured she put him through enough for now).

With his session with Ms. Pillsbury over, Puck feels good. Tomorrow she'll get Quinn to her office and he'll talk to her and this whole mess will be over. (Or at least he hopes that's the way it'll go.)

-o-o-o-

"We need to talk," he tells her and he can tell she's not a fan of his trick and if he's going to get her to listen, he's got to be quick.

She opens her mouth to respond, unsure of what would come out because she certainly didn't have another thought in her head besides "crap."

He holds up a hand to stop her from whatever she's going to say and tells her, "You're the one that's been avoiding me, so I think that means as the one who's been getting gypped, I get to go first."

Quinn's partially relieved that he wants to say something first (at least she didn't have to try and remember the details of her lie- which were completely escaping her at the moment). But she's also partially terrified that he's about to blame her for toying with his heart and want nothing more to do with her romantically ever.

Since she didn't object, though he didn't expect her to, Puck continues on, determined, "Do you have any idea how much the last thirteen days sucked? You not talking to me, not cool. Especially over the fact that _you_ kissed _me_. Okay, maybe I ran with it from there, but it was still all you initially and then you give me the silent treatment over something you did?" He shakes his head, like he's disappointed in her (really, just frustrated). He continues, "I get it. I got it right away. You didn't want it to go anywhere from there. You told me that- how us in a relationship or even trying to be seemed to really screw up the peace between us. And you definitely demonstrated that now, though you didn't have to, because as I said, I got it. You didn't want it to mean anything. Okay, I'm cool with that. I know you felt guilty because you thought you were stringing me along or whatever- which, if you wanted to, would be totally cool with me anyway- but you didn't do that so stop freaking out about it. Okay?"

"No, not okay," she responds, everything he said having prompted her to find her voice. "I'm so sorry for how I dealt with what I did. I know avoiding you was wrong, I just couldn't seem to help it. Not confronting things was ingrained in me (by her parents, she knows she doesn't need to tell him that bit though) and as much as I don't want it to be, it was my first instinct." Just as important as apologizing, she continues, "But it's not just what I said about us trying to be anything more than friends seems to end up horribly every time and we can't afford that right now, it's also that-"

"If we're together or if we got together and broke up, you're worried it would affect your decision about what to do about the baby and then you wouldn't end up doing what's best for her," Puck finishes. Seeing how stunned she is that he knew that, he adds (leaving out the part where Jessica helped him piece that together), "I can figure things out."

"Apparently," she agrees, still surprised (although she did mention that to Jessica once- she wonders if Jess helped him reach those conclusions).

Getting back to her worries, he adds, "I think that idea's…good thinking, or whatever, and it's probably a good idea if we're you know, cautious like that. But…I don't think there's anything that could happen that would make you not make the best decision for her." As he says "her" he brushes the tips of his fingers over her growing stomach, just briefly, not lingering.

Her breath hitches at the contact and she hopes he doesn't notice. "Thank you," she responds softly. She adds a regretful confession, "But I don't want to risk it." (And she knows that he knows that she's talking about everything involving them. She can't risk anything affecting them doing the right thing, she can't risk another attempt at a relationship with him right now, and she especially can't risk her heart on him again…at the moment.)

"I know," he says understandingly.

As he's standing there (_so close_), looking at her like he would do anything in the world for her, she finds herself tempted to repeat her recent mistake. But she quickly manages to snap herself out of that train of thought thankfully and forges ahead to the last thing she needed to say to him that she hadn't been looking forward to getting to. "While I was stupidly not talking to you," she begins, "there was something else that happened that I swear I was going to talk to you about. I would never leave you out of it, it was just taking me a lot longer to work up the courage than I wanted. And I-"

"I know you set up appointments to visit adoption agencies," he finishes for her. Her rambling was getting sad and self-deprecating and he couldn't take it anymore.

Her face scrunches up in confusion. "How did you know that? Did Ms. Pillsbury tell you?" she doesn't care that he knows, but she thought things between her and Ms. Pillsbury were strictly between the two of them so she's a little concerned.

"No. Rachel told Finn who told me," he explains. He continues in excitement, "He's cool with us now. We talked the other day and everything's good. He wants to talk to you about how he wants to be friends again, but he doesn't want to do it at school where everyone will be watching. We only got to talk the other day cause I ran into him at Best Buy. I think you're going to have a hard time finding time to talk to him though- Rachel's got him on a real short leash."

"He's forgiven us?" she checks, hardly believing it as her eyes light up with hope.

"Yep," he repeats.

She can hardly believe it. Part of her thought that he'd never speak to her again (part of her, thought she deserved it if he did). Smiling brilliantly, she questions eagerly, "Well, did you give him my new number so he could arrange to see me outside of school so I don't have to wait for randomly running into him somewhere?"

Oh. That would have been smart. "No. Doing that didn't occur to either one of us," he answers.

That's unfortunate. Now that she knows that he wants to talk to her, she's not sure how long she can wait. There's a lot she's wanted to say to him for a very long time now but had been waiting to tell him until he was ready to hear it. Now that he was ready to be around her and talk to her again, she didn't want to wait much longer. Thinking quickly, she asks Puck, "Do you think you could give him my number? I don't want to approach him- just in case he was only telling you he's okay with me too, but he's not ready to confront me yet. I don't want to pressure him so I think it'd be better to give him the option of contacting me when he feels comfortable."

He supposes that makes sense and agrees easily, "Sure." Talking about Finn had been a detour from what they were originally supposed to be talking about though. So, getting back on track, Puck continues what he had originally intended to, "About you making appointments though- I knew you were going to do that. We talked about it. We have to really look into all options, right? So I'm fine with that too. It's not like it was a surprise. I don't know why you would worry about it."

"Because I want to go to the appointments alone," she forces out quickly- if she didn't say it now, she wasn't sure she'd ever go through with it. Seeing his confusion (and hurt), she rushes on, "I'm not changing my mind. I want you to be involved with everything and I want us to make a decision together."

"Then why do you want to do this alone?" he's quick to demand.

"I need to," she answers simply, "I need to do something on my own. When Ms. Pillsbury told me about all the places she found and I asked her to set up appointments, she asked if I wanted her to come with me and I realized I don't want anyone to come with me. By the end of this semester I'm going to be on my own and right now I'm lucky that I have you and your family and my sister and my friends to lean on, but I can't always lean on other people. I need to do something on my own." She rationalizes, "This seemed like the best thing to do on my own since these first appointments with the seven agencies she found are only to narrow it down to which agencies we should actually seriously consider using. I'm not going to pick a family or make any agreements with any of them. I'm just going to them because some adoption agencies make promises-"

"To get you to give them your baby or they try to manipulate you into deciding to give the baby up if you're on the fence because them getting a baby means that they get to charge someone looking for a kid to adopt a ton of money," Puck finishes. He knows she didn't expect him to know that and though he'd like to take credit, he can't. He confesses, "My mom printed out a bunch of stuff on adoption and taped it on my face while I was sleeping so I wouldn't miss it. Then she badgered me about reading it until I was finished with every last bit of it."

"Of course she did," Quinn says with a fond smile- she liked May more and more every day. "All of that's true though so that's why these first appointments are perfect for something for me to do alone- they're easy decisions based on what ones don't seem to be trying to force me into doing anything. Plus, I have them set up for next week- Friday afternoon and all day Saturday. It's all day because a couple of them are in Columbus. Ms. Pillsbury thought we might want to choose an agency further away that way we lessen the risk of running into the parents we might pick with the baby afterwards. And that would be a whole day of work for you to miss plus an afternoon of work. It doesn't take two of us to figure out which ones are the best so I didn't think it was worth you missing work for. I know how hard you've been working to make sure that you can contribute."

Well, unfortunately she made some good points. Deciding which agencies they definitely didn't want to use wasn't a two-person job and it would be really bad for him to miss a day and a half of work. Plus, he kind of understands why she'd feel the need to do something alone. Even if she has a replacement family in his and even if she has some really good friends now, she's going to have to survive on her own from the age of sixteen/seventeen on. Her parents taught her that just because people should stay in her life, it doesn't mean they will. She's just trying to prepare herself to be more self-sufficient and he knows she's a planner and worrier and she's just trying to be smart so he knows he's going to have to let her even though he thinks it's all pointless because he doesn't ever plan on not being around for her to lean on if she needs/wants it. So he doesn't try to get her to take her with him and just agrees, "Okay."

"Really?" she checks, unsure that he accepted everything she just told him. She knew it was unexpected. She knew she could count on him to be there for her so the fact that she wanted to do anything concerning their decision about their daughter without him was strange. But Puck had been saving her a lot lately- even here now, with making them talk when she didn't have the courage to do it herself- and as grateful as she was for it, she felt like she was starting to rely on it. Like she couldn't do anything on her own and considering that she's going to soon be truly on her own with having to leave her parent's house, that's not a smart habit for her to develop. So she needed to do something on her own, something to break the forming habit.

"I'm not crazy about it," he admits, "but you're right that it wouldn't really take both of us to pick out which agencies are good and which ones suck. Plus, you'd probably figure it out quicker than me at any of them and they're really just going to be after you anyway. And I do need to work so…yeah it's okay with me if you do this on your own." Before she can get too happy about his acceptance, he tacks on, "But I really wish you'd reconsider going completely alone. I mean, especially for the ones in Columbus. I don't like the idea of you going all the way there and being in the city all alone."

She fully intended and wanted to do all of it alone, but his genuine concern for her and his acceptance of letting her go without him was so nice of him that she finds herself saying, "I'll think about taking someone else out of town with me."

"Good," he says, hoping that when she considers it she'll end up deciding not to go alone, even if he's not the one she takes with her. "Are we good now?" he checks, "Nothing else you were avoiding me over?"

"No. Nothing else," she confirms. She offers again, still feeling like horrible coward, "And I'm really sorry for everything again."

He shrugs it off, "It's cool. But don't do that again."

"I won't, I promise," she's quick to swear. Only semi-serious, she adds, "And if I do, you have my permission to find a way into trapping me into talking to you again."

Yeah, he had a feeling she wasn't going to be too pleased with his method. He supposes he got lucky that she seems to feel so guilty for what she did that she's willing to let it go that he used a school staff member to trap her in her office (which meant he had to tell said staff member at least something about their dilemma-of-the-moment). He tries to explain himself a bit (just to make sure she's not going to get mad about what he did), "Well, I had to do something. I waited outside the door of one of your classes one day, I was there before the bell rang, and I still managed to miss you somehow. It's been almost two weeks, and almost a week since your sister helped you cook up an excuse to use about the kiss, so I was getting really desperate. Had to use my last resort."

Quinn felt bad that she had been so good at avoiding Puck that he had to use his last method of trying to talk to her (though she's really curious about how much he had to tell Ms. Pillsbury about what was going on to get her to go along with this). But more than noticing that in what he said, she's surprised by something else he said. "Jess told you what she told me to tell you about why I kissed you?" she asks, blushing as she admits that she kissed him and instantly regretting that she was admitting to her increased hormones not being the reason.

"Yeah, she told me that she had read about how your…estrogen, or whatever, is really high while you're pregnant so some women get really horny around their second trimesters. Which I had kinda read too- it was the only part in that whole book my mom gave me that caught my attention. Anyway, she told me that she told you to tell me that that was the reason you kissed me- cause you're just really easily turned on at the moment. And I would have probably bought that too. I'm pretty hot, it makes sense that I'd be hard to resist," Puck answers with a suggestive smirk, taking a confident step toward Quinn.

She takes a step back, trying to leave the space between them as a precaution (she doesn't know what she might be tempted to do if he were any closer). "It wasn't a very good excuse though and you really shouldn't have bought it if I had said it because that's not happening to me. The extra estrogen isn't having…_that_ effect on me," she tells him, fully believing she's telling the truth.

"Really?" he asks, taking another step toward her.

She takes another step back and finds herself up against Ms. Pillsbury's desk. "Yes," she confirms, though she sounds uncertain as she breaths out the syllable (which she hates because she should be certain- even if it's difficult with Puck getting closer).

He takes another step forward and accepts doubtfully, "Okay." He leaves barely an inch between them as he continues, "But you know, if that does ever happen, if you ever find that being pregnant gives you some…urges, since it's my baby and all and I'm half at fault for you being pregnant had having to put up with the symptoms of it, I'd really prefer if you acted on those urges with me. In fact, I think it's only right that I take on the challenge of dealing with that particular task."

"You want me to use you? Because, given that our relationship can't go anywhere, that's what it would be should the scenario you suggested occur," she says, playing along because kissing him again would be bad, but flirting couldn't hurt too much, right?

"Yep. I'm totally okay with you using me. Use me as much as you'd like. I think it's only fair given what you're going to have to go through to have our kid. I only skimmed that chapter in the pregnancy book, but it made me queasy. So really it's the least I could do to let you use me whenever you're turned on," he smirks again, knowing she won't take him up on the offer but hoping she will all the same.

So he doesn't have to hear her turn this conversation serious and refuse the offer, Puck moves on, "I should probably get back to class." He asks again, just to make sure, "We're cool?"

"Yes," she repeats.

"Good," he says with a smile. As an afterthought, he adds, "Oh and the glee club knew something was up with you and me and everything so it'd probably good to say something to them today at lunch about it all. I'll go along with whatever you want- the truth, some version of it, a huge lie- whatever."

"Right," she says, pondering the idea. She knows she isn't going with the whole truth, but she's not sure what to say to everyone for her recent bad behavior. "Thank you again, for everything," she tells him sincerely, not noticing the lack of distance between them at the moment, because in her moment of immense gratitude for not only his understanding but for doing what she found she couldn't, she doesn't really mind the lack of space at all.

"No problem," he responds (though actually having to hunt her down had been a huge problem…though that doesn't seem like such a big deal now- end result was worth the trouble). "See you at lunch," he says hopefully.

She nods in response and before she can return with a "see you there," he's kissing her. She didn't see it coming at all. Just all of a sudden his hands were cupping her face and he was kissing her. It's forceful and nearly knocks the breath right out of her and just as she finds herself nearly completely melted into it the kiss, he pulls away.

Then, like nothing had happened, he says, "See you later. Oh, and remember you have to call my mom and explain everything too. I didn't tell her much so you can make up whatever you want for why you haven't come over. Later." Then he's out the door.

Quinn stands there, still up against Ms. Pillsbury's desk, wondering what the hell just happened. Had Puck not understood their entire conversation? Because they had just covered how the kiss on New Years was a mistake because they couldn't explore a romantic relationship right now, it was too risky. He seemed to accept everything- hell he even got everything she had intended to tell him without her having to say anything at all. So how did he manage to not understand or ignore it all and just kiss her?

Lost in her confusion, Quinn doesn't notice Puck poking his head back into the office until he startles her saying, "And that's just a little pay back."

"What?" she questions, still just as confused.

"Kissing you and then walking away like it was nothing drove you a little crazy, didn't it? We just talked about all that stuff about not doing exactly stuff like that and then I did it immediately. Didn't make sense, right? Made you confused and frustrated a little?" he asks, "Well times whatever you felt for the last minute by like...a million because I had thirteen days of it. I had to get you back for that a little bit."

"That was payback?" she asks relieved (disappointed). "Good. And I promise I won't do that to you again," she says, because really, she understands a little bit better now just how awful she must have made the last thirteen days for him.

"I know," he says. He turns to leave and adds over his shoulder, "Though maybe, I was just messing with you in saying that I only kissed you as payback." He leaves her to ponder that because really, she did deserve to be frustrated and confused for longer than a minute.

He's just messing with her in saying that. She thinks. Probably. Maybe. Or not. But if he wasn't then why had he kissed her?

(The idea that he did it because he just wanted to crosses her mind- she doesn't notice how she smiles when it does.)

-o-o-o-

"I'm sorry," Quinn begins at lunch, surrounded by a table filled with most of the members of glee club (Puck sitting beside her). "I've been an idiot lately. And I never should have let my avoiding Puck effect all of you."

"Why were you avoiding Puck?" Kurt poses. He was deprived one of his new best friends at lunch for over a week, he feels he deserves to know why.

Okay, time for the partial lie she had decided to go with. "I felt guilty," she tells them (which is true), "and I couldn't bear the idea of facing him." She knows they're going to ask, so she offers (and here comes her somewhat truthful concoction), "I made appointments to visit adoption agencies. Puck and I had discussed it before so that part wasn't going to be a surprise to him. But, given that I want him to make the decision with me, I knew the fact that I want to go to these first appointments alone…might make it seem like I was changing my mind so I was irrationally nervous about talking to him." She glances at Puck with a small grateful smile, "When Puck finally forced me to talk to him though, he was very understanding. I've been depending on a lot of people for a lot of things lately, and I won't be able to do that forever, I need to do something on my own."

"And it makes sense for her to do this on her own because she's just going to pick out what agencies she likes best- it doesn't really require both of us. Plus it'd make me miss a bunch of work, which wouldn't be too good," Puck picks up. He wanted to jump in to her explanation/apology just to make it clear that he really was cool about everything; that the two of them were okay now.

They're meet with silence. Which is an odd occurrence considering the glee club members (currently sans Santana and Brittany who didn't actually seem aware anything had been going on) were normally a pretty vocal group (no pun intended).

After a beat of silence, during which many significant glances were exchanged, Mercedes speaks up, uncertainty heavy in her tone, "So, uh, you're giving the baby up for adoption?"

It then that both Quinn and Puck realize that they had never talked about or so much as mentioned what they may do. Everyone knew that they had decisions to make, but everything had been kept almost entirely between the two of them (with the exception of Quinn's mention of this very thing to Rachel last week and Finn's knowledge of it from when he was wrongfully involved in the situation).

"We haven't made a decision yet," Quinn answers. She doesn't want to have some big discussion over this where everyone weighs in so she tries to sound authoritatively and confident as she adds, "We're going to do whatever's best for her and it seems like that will probably be giving her up so we're going to explore that option thoroughly."

Silence settled over the table again. It wasn't that everyone at the table hadn't known that Quinn and Puck had difficult decisions to make about the baby. They had all been aware of that for quite some time and they had all even tried to be sensitive to it, to help. But the gravity of the situation had never really hit them before this moment where the idea that they'd give the baby away became suddenly real because they're going to visit adoption agencies. The idea that their two friends would have to say goodbye to their child forever, hung like a dark cloud over most of the table.

Except for Finn. It wasn't that long ago that he thought he was going to have to give his kid up and he understood why he'd have to do it so he understood why Quinn and Puck were still pursuing the idea. Although, he didn't like the idea of anyone having to do that- especially not two people who he thought were totally capable of being parents (it couldn't be _that_ hard- tons of people had done it).

Eventually Rachel starts ranting about how they should have never foregone any practices no matter what since they have regional's approaching. It's an effective way of distracting everyone from the bit of reality they had just been slapped with.

Quinn just sits and listens, eats her lunch, as everyone carries on with various conversations. It seems like they were all fine about what she did, which doesn't surprise her because they had originally accepted her despite the way she used to treat most of them. But she still feels awful that she let her fear and guilt get to her so much that she reverted to her old habit of avoidance and that she let that avoidance of Puck lead to her mostly avoiding her friends, people who had been so good to her, as well.

As Rachel and Mercedes argue over which one of them should get to do a solo song at regional's for the umpteenth time, Puck discretely reaches for Quinn's hand under the table. He laces her fingers with hers because he noticed how she seemed caught up in her thoughts somewhere.

She smiles at him shyly, gratefully and gives his hand a small squeeze as thanks for…just being there.

Across the table, unnoticed to the pair, Kurt leans over to Artie and says with a nod in Quinn and Puck's direction, "Maybe January will end up paying off for you after all."

-o-o-o-

They sit by each other at glee practice. Puck knows that it's because he wants to sit by Quinn, while Quinn tells herself that it's a way to keep reassuring everyone that everything between them is fine again.

Mr. Schue begins practice on time for a change. He stands in front of all of them and says with a chuckle, "It's about time we're having practice, right?" He see's Rachel's glare (she had already made her feelings on the lack of practices clear to him) and he moves on quickly, teasing them with a smile, "I have some great news for you." He pauses, purely for dramatic effect, before revealing, "A while ago Principal Figgins mentioned to me that he may be able to get us some money so that we don't have to raise our own money for a bus to regional's in Dayton. That's why I've procrastinated in even discussing fund raising with you guys. And I'm happy to announce that, thanks to our win at sectionals, he was able to secure enough money for us to pay for the trip and our new costumes."

After some brief general merriment and relief that they wouldn't have to do another bake sale (though honestly, there were two members that had been kind of looking forward to another bake sale), Mr. Schue reigns in the attention of the glee club again and continues, "First, as I really hope all of you know, we're going to have an extra long practice today to make up for missing some practices. If you really have to leave, it's okay, but I hope all of you were able to make sure you were free for the afternoon. Second, I've been thinking about what we can do to win over the judges and I've decided we should try…country music. A lot of people are fans of country music and I think it's a genre we should explore more. Also, though I hope nothing like that ever happens again and you guys did well with it, what happened at sectionals with having to come up with a routine quickly is something I've been thinking we should work on. So, I'm going to give you an hour to go off to the library, look for songs, get lyrics, and practice your choices anywhere on campus that won't disturb anyone else still here, then we'll meet back here and perform. No two days or a week or two to come up with something and perfect it and execute it this time. I think it'd be a good challenge for you guys to only have this afternoon, this single practice to learn and perfect a performance."

"Do you want group performances, duets, or solo's?" Kurt asks for clarification.

"Anything you want. I'm hoping for a mixture. You can even do more than one song if you want, but know your limits. I don't want to see anyone trying to do three or four songs and messing up on every one of them because you were trying to learn too much in an hour," Mr. Schue warns. What comes next, is not at all a surprise to him. Noticing the eagerly raised hand, he calls, "Rachel."

"I'd like to perform my first song of today's practice. I already have a fantastic country song in my repertoire," she adds as a suggestion to her fellow club members, "As any great performer should."

Arguing with Rachel tended to be completely pointless so Mr. Schue offers, "Well, if you really feel you're ready to sing a song without any rehearsal…" he gestures for her to take the "stage" in front of everyone.

"Oh she doesn't need any rehearsal to totally kill a whole variety of songs. You should have seen her on New Years Eve Mr. Schue, pick a song or a style and that girl probably has something up her sleeve," Mercedes says, in rare praise of Rachel. She might not always like Rachel or how competitive or self-righteous she can be, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to give props where they were due.

Rachel, surprised and touched that Mercedes had complimented her out of the blue despite their rather bumpy relationship, forgets herself for a minute and has to be prompted by Mr. Schue saying, "Rachel, you're going to need to tell Brad what song you're doing."

"Oh, right," she says, coming back to herself, "I don't want any accompaniment. I'm going to do this acapella." After she takes a second to clear her throat and prepare herself, she starts singing Patsy Cline's "Walkin' After Midnight." Of course she does wonderfully, as she always does, carrying the tune at a slightly slower pace and feeling the words as she sings them.

They all disperse after Rachel finishes, all heading for the library to look up country songs and get sheet music. Everyone seems to be working on their own so Quinn plans to do a solo and goes searching for a song with that idea behind it. It's only after finally picking a song and getting the sheet music (a half hour into their hour) that Quinn notices that some groups had formed. She's also happy to notice Puck with all the other guys and Finn's phone in his hand (or at least it definitely wasn't his phone) she hopes that means that Finn has her number now and it won't be long before they get to talk.

By the time the hour ends, Quinn gets paranoid about working alone. She had been distant from everyone lately, and since it seemed like a lot of people were either incorporating others into their song or just pairing up, she didn't want to do her song alone so she asks Tina and Brittany to sing back up of the chorus, to which they easily agree.

When the hour's up, performances start. The lack of time shows a tiny bit- a fumbled lyric here and there. Also, pretty much no one choreographed anything for their songs, which was another sign of the time limit. But for the most part all songs went well.

Tina and Artie do a sweet duet of Lady Antebellum's "I Run to You," which Artie prefaces by commenting that they were going for a bit of irony since he could only "wheel" to Tina.

Finn, Mike, and Matt sing "Rhinestone Cowboy." It's an okay performance, and the one most displeased with it seems to be Rachel (everyone had heard her admonishment to Finn in the library about how he should be singing a solo to highlight his solo singing capabilities).

Brittany and Santana take on Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats." They trade off lines of versus, but Santana takes all the big notes and the chorus with Brittany harmonizing- really showing off her ability to handle a difficult solo (something Mr. Schue comments on, proud of her for doing something so ambitious).

Puck sings "I Walk the Line"- in his own voice, no Johnny Cash imitation- because he claimed he hated country and if he had to pick a country song to sing on his own, Johnny was the only one that was even kind of good. He accompanies himself on the guitar and his playing is really the most impressive part since he learned it in an hour (and it seemed fairly difficult).

(Puck is one of the people who flubs his lyrics a bit- despite the fact that they're pretty simple lyrics. But it's not his fault. While he was singing the chorus for the second time, Quinn- who had been smiling the whole performance- pointed at her stomach and mouthed "kicking again." Naturally, he was distracted by that…happily so.)

For her second song, Rachel goes with Faith Hill's "Breathe," and does as wonderfully as she did with the first.

Kurt and Mercedes have the most memorable performance of the performances so far though, as they duet Kenny Loggins and Dolly Parton's "Islands in the Stream." They also do a brief bit of "9 to 5" just for fun. And Mercedes, intent on competing with Rachel and her two big solo performances, also takes on LeAnn Rimes' "Blue," and nails it.

Quinn goes second to last. She was nervous- she wasn't sure why, she had sung in front of everyone many times before, but she supposed she just didn't feel as comfortable around them again after avoiding everyone and then kind of lying about the reason for doing so. So she had avoided taking her turn for a while until she finally forced herself into it. She wanted to go with a Taylor Swift song, because she liked Taylor Swift. But she didn't want to sing anything that could possibly dig up any of the past turmoil with Puck, which ruled out several of Taylor's songs given how bad relationship centric they tended to be. She didn't really want anything with too fast of beat either, otherwise she felt like she was slacking for not having anything choreographed for it. And "Place in this World," hit a little too close to her experience with her parents at the start of the song for her to consider going with it (she didn't want to be that exposed- or exposed at all today). So she goes with "Enchanted" because it's sweet and simple (and it does kind of apply to her and Puck a bit- but only in a good way).

Quinn feels a bit more at ease once the song begins and she starts singing.

"_There I was again tonight, _

_forcing laughter, faking smiles, _

_same old tired lonely place," _

And suddenly she's not so comfortable any more because the baby just kicked, pretty hard too. But she continues on singing.

"_Walls of insincerity, _

_shifting eyes and vacancy, _

_vanished when I saw your face. _

_All I can say is it was enchanting to meet you."_

She takes a deep breath in the brief pause between versus. There hadn't been another kick, and she hopes that there won't be.

"_Your eyes whispered "have we met?"  
Across the room your silhouette starts to make it's way to me." _

A small kick she tries not to react to as the lyrics quickly continue.

"_The playful conversation starts  
Counter all your quick remarks like passing notes in secrecy_

_And it was enchanting to meet you  
All I can say is I was enchanted to meet you." _

Lots of steady kicks and Quinn realizes that they're pretty distracting. But she immediately knows that if the baby is going to kick when she's singing, she's going to have to manage to not get distracted by it because otherwise she wouldn't have much of a use in glee club.

"_This night is sparkling, don't you let it go  
I'm wonderstruck, blushing all the way home  
I'll spend forever wondering if you knew  
I was enchanted_- Ow!"

Quinn winces as her hand flies to her stomach and she nearly doubles over. Brittany finishes the line while Tina manages to stop just as abruptly as Quinn.

"Quinn," Mr. Schue says worriedly as Puck rushes to her.

"What's wrong?" he asks, taking her hand and trying to get a read on her face (which makes him crouch awkwardly like her).

"I'm fine," she tries to assure, slowly standing up right again, pain still etched in her features. She continues to explain before anyone starts to over react (she noticed how the rest of the club seemed to be standing, ready to pounce and do something if there were real trouble here), "She's been kicking since I started singing and I think she just got me in the kidney's- really hard." She takes a deep breath, trying to ignore the pain, "And she's still kicking."

"She's kicking?" Mercedes asks, excited. Which is clearly a sentiment shared by the rest of the club as they rush up to feel even though none of them asked.

Mercedes, having been one of the first ones to her, comments, "Damn. She's really going to town on you."

"Yeah," Quinn says with a humorous laugh. She didn't kick nearly as hard when Puck sang. In fact, her kicking then was even pleasant. Was it something about her voice then? Something the baby didn't like when she sang that was causing all these sharp kicks. And God, she really wished the baby would lay off her kidney's- this couldn't be good for them (if that was indeed her kidneys- it had been a while since she had an anatomy unit in any science class).

"Maybe she doesn't like Taylor Swift," Rachel suggests as she trades places with Mercedes for a feel.

"Maybe she doesn't like country," Kurt suggests. He adds quietly to so just those also currently feeling the baby kick and Quinn can hear him, "She's not the only one. God, when is over it better be our last foray into country."

"You can't really blame her for kicking you," Santana tells her, "that song blows."

"I like that song," Brittany offers. Santana rolls her eyes at her, but smiles while she does it.

"Maybe we should give Quinn some room," Mr. Schue suggests. No one asked if they could invade her space, he was well aware of that.

Puck had been pushed out of the way while everyone had come up. He was cool with it. He had already felt her kick anyway and wasn't sure he liked the idea of having that kind of experience in front of everyone.

"She's kind of stealing your move, isn't she," Finn calls to Puck, who is also off to the side. He was cool with both of them now and everything (though he had yet to tell one of them that), but the idea of feeling his ex girlfriend's stomach to feel her and his best friend's baby kick was more than a little weird. Since Puck looks confused about what he means, he elaborates, "Kicking someone in the kidneys."

"Right," Puck says, Finn's intent clicking, "but she's getting it wrong." He takes a couple of steps to his right, to stand next to Quinn and looks down at her stomach as he explains, "You only kick someone in the kidneys once you've beaten them to the ground."

Everyone's eyes turn to Puck. In response to their looks, he defends, "What? It's the same thing as telling her to stop."

"Either way, I don't think you're going to have any luck getting her to listen to you," Mr. Schue says, moving on. Not only had the completely stopped practicing now, but if Puck and Quinn give the baby away like he knows they're strongly considering, he's not so sure anything where the others might start to get attached is a good idea. He knows such an event- giving up the baby- will take a serious toll on both Quinn and Puck, but it doesn't need to have a big impact on everyone else so times like these should probably be avoided unless a different decision is made. "So let's give Quinn some room," he says more insistently this time. He asks her as everyone starts re-taking their seats, "How are you feeling? Do you want to try to get through the song again or you could wait and try it again after the guys do the number they've put together?"

"I think the kicking is starting to tapper off a bit so maybe just a little more time would help and then I could get through it," she answers.

"Okay. Then guys, you're up," Mr. Schue declares.

On her way back to her seat, the baby gets her in the kidneys again, making Quinn wince and making what she said to Mr. Schue no longer true- it wasn't getting better anymore.

All of the boys had put together a simple performance of Uncle Kracker's "Smile." Finn, Puck, Artie, and Kurt divided it up so that all of them had solo lines (Mike and Matt hadn't wanted any), but there was a lot of everyone singing together as they simply sat on stools to perform- Puck and Artie both playing along.

When they're done, Mr. Schue checks, "Quinn, how are you doing?"

"It's the same, but I can try again," she answers.

"We could put it off if you'd like. There's no reason to think that this will happen every time you sing so we could just try it later," he offers.

"Or," Rachel butts in, "Maybe it would help if you didn't have to sing as much. You could split up the song- still take the lead, but give out a few lines here and there so you can get a break from having to sing through the kicking."

Deep breaths to not think about the pain in her kidneys did seem to help- and seemed to make the baby not kick her for a second, maybe, she thinks. So she agrees, "That sounds like a good idea."

"Great, we'll all help then," Rachel says, volunteering all of the girls. She tells Mr. Schue, "I think we'll only need about ten minutes."

Quinn lets Rachel take the reigns from there. Tina and Brittany are very willing to help, as is Mercedes. Rachel has to call Santana over to join them (she wasn't too keen on singing a song that she thought was super lame- until she was given her own line to sing and some big notes to hit with Mercedes during the chorus).

Rachel leaves Quinn with about half of the beginning versus and has them all joining her the chorus' (she whispers to Quinn that if she needs a break during any of them, don't worry, they'll be able to carry them without her). Rachel also insists that Quinn take the lead in the bridge and on the lines that started out with "please" as well.

(As Rachel dolls out tasks, Quinn strokes her stomach slowly, hoping that it would be soothing for either her or the baby. Apparently it wasn't going to work like that- at least not right now- because it didn't do anything for the baby and the only result was that her hand occasionally got kicked. She smiled a little every time it did- especially since, in those moments, her kidneys weren't getting attacked).

They take use the stools from the boys' performance and Quinn notices as soon as she starts singing that sitting while she sings seems to lessen the kicking (or maybe she just got tired of kickboxing her kidneys). By halfway through the song, the kicking seems to stop all together. Maybe the solution had been to keep singing all along.

While the boys are still clapping for them at the end of the song, Puck asks, "Everything okay now?" He suspected it was by the smile on her face, but he wanted to make sure.

"Yep, she stopped half way through the song," Quinn answers.

"I had a line half way through," Santana comments. Met with significant looks, she adds, "What? I'm just saying…" she finishes quietly as Mr. Schue congratulates the girls on putting together such a good arrangement so quickly, "maybe she prefers my voice. Really, who wouldn't?"

Brittany nods in agreement… though she kind of liked Quinn's voice (though now clearly wasn't the time to say that in front of Santana).

"All of you did really great considering the time restraint. We might have to do this more often. But since we only have a little over two weeks left until regional's and we only have our normal practice times until then, it's unlikely we'll do it again before regional's," he rambles, slightly to himself as he's caught up in his thoughts. Getting back to the present everyone there, he adds encouragingly, "Who knows, maybe it will be an exercise we'll use a lot to get ready for nationals after we win regional's."

He dismisses them, which, considering how long practice was, makes most people run for the exit. Rachel and Finn hang back a bit- Rachel having picked up their "argument" from the library about what kind of songs Finn should be performing.

Puck picks up Quinn's stuff for her and heads out the door so she has to catch up.

Once she does, several doors down from the choir room, she asks, "Why did you take my stuff?"

"Cause you just got your kidneys bashed. I know what that's like. Mostly from having done it to other people, but a couple of times I was on the receiving end and carrying your enormous book bag- really, I thought you weren't ever supposed to be carrying this much weight?- probably not gonna feel too good right now," Puck explains, walking to her car now that they were out in the parking lot.

Well, that was a really nice gesture. Though he could have said something first so she didn't have to chase after him thinking he had randomly taken her things for some confusing reason (he had already purposely confused her today and that was still definitely occupying most of her thoughts). She unlocks her car so he can put her bag inside as she says, "Thank you." She adds, since he apparently knew about the whole carrying heavy things while pregnant thing (May must have really been on him about reading stuff lately), "And I know I'm not supposed to be carrying too much. I talked to Ms. Pillsbury last week about having my teachers get me an extra set of books to leave at home so I wouldn't have to carry so much and they all came through on that today so this is all of them and the last time I should have to haul them home."

"Good," he says and he's grateful that she had that solution because his hadn't been nearly as smart as simply asking for another set of books (it probably would have taken lots of convincing to get her to use a shopping cart at school too, not to mention that he thinks stealing those things might be illegal). "You sure everything's good now?" he asks, hand lightly running over her stomach again.

She tries to ignore the shivers that go down her spine and answers, "Yeah, she stopped kicking for now. Though I guess I'll have to get used to those sharp kicks and to getting kicked in the kidneys, she's got a while left to do it and chances are she probably will."

"Or on top of getting used to it you could also learn to benefit from it. Maybe it could get you out of class whenever it happens. Just emphasize how bad it is, your teachers will send you to the nurse, she's not exactly qualified to do anything so she'll just let you lay in her office, and then you get to take a nap," he figures easily- getting out of class was an area he was an expert in.

She smiles. It was so nice just to talk to him again. To stand here next to him and hypothesize about things that weren't that important but that they both know they say just so they can stand here a little bit longer- she missed this, immensely. "Thank you," she says again, "for everything, but especially for doing what I couldn't and finding a way to make me talk to you."

"You would have done it eventually," he offers with a modest shrug, face turning toward the snow beneath his shoes (she had a way of making him feel like blushing with the simplest of words).

"I don't know about that," she says honestly, because she wasn't sure she would have had the courage without at least a nudge.

"Yeah you would have, " he insists, "you would have had to start talking to me by the doctor's appointment in a couple of weeks. You still want me to come, right?"

"Yes, of course," she responds immediately to his question, "and I guess I would have by then. Or at least I told myself that I would have. But…you know how good I am at avoiding things…I'm not sure anything would have changed by then if it hadn't been for you."

"Well, you may be good at avoiding things, but I'm impatient so there was no way I was going to wait two more weeks. It was a combination that worked out this time- your avoidance, my impatience," Puck figures. He was trying to come up with something so she wouldn't feel so bad about what she did. He had made bigger mistakes and she hadn't done anything to make him feel bad about them so, since she seemed to feel bad enough about hers all on her own, he felt like he should reassure her that it wasn't that big of a deal that she screwed up (even if it had made the last two weeks of his life miserable). He knew that was kind of a foreign concept for her- not being perfect being okay- but he figured it was worth a try to say something to try and make her feel better about it.

(Not to mention that he felt bad that his kid was kicking the crap out of her kidneys- probably for only the first time- which she totally got from him. Going after the kidneys got him many wins during his brief foray into fight club.)

He was clearly trying to make her feel better about what she did, which she appreciates so Quinn smiles like it worked (though she still feels awful- there were so many bad habits she still needed to work on). She closes the space between them and wraps her arms around his torso in a hug. "Even if it's a good combination, thank you," she tells him, because if it weren't for him she'd still be stubbornly keeping her distance and she wouldn't get to be standing here hugging him right now.

It takes him a few beats to realize she had said anything. With all of the frustration over her avoiding him and the time consuming task of trying to figure out a way to talk to her, he had almost forgotten that he missed this too. It was a relatively new part of their relationship- the hugging- but definitely one of the better ones and had he been able to recall all he was missing sooner, he wouldn't have let her go so long without talking to him. "You're welcome," he responds eventually, still holding on to her, not ready to let go yet.

But it's January and they're in Ohio and they've been outside in the below freezing temperature with snow just starting to fall for a while. So she pulls away and tells him (for a change), "I'll talk to you later." This time, she's going to call him instead of the other way around.

He smiles, very happy to hear that. "Yep," he responds and forces himself to start walking away (before he loses the ability and motivation to all together). "And you're going to call my mom too, right," he adds as he walks backwards to his truck. His mom would kill him if he didn't make sure Quinn was going to call.

"As soon as I get home," she promises as she opens her car door. She has nothing left to do but get in her car and not doing it now that she was there, ready, seemed like it would make it really obvious that she was stalling. So she calls, "Bye," and gets in her car.

Puck returns her goodbye and turns around and walks the rest of the way to his truck. Saying goodbye didn't feel like such a big deal, not when he knew things were good now and it'd only be a little while before he talked to her again and only until morning when he saw her again.

-o-o-o-

Quinn drives home feeling better than she had in almost two weeks. She knew it was her fault everything got so messed up. She really didn't deal with mistakes well these days. Honestly, she had never dealt with them well. She knows it's probably a result of how her parents expected perfection, but even if she can sort of blame the habit on them, her actions in this instance weren't their fault they were hers.

Puck was right. She should have known that he would understand about everything. He had already been understanding about everything so far, she didn't have any reason to fear that he wouldn't. She didn't have to make up a lie like she had and she didn't have to consider using it. She should have just talked to him right away. She had vowed to herself that she would make sure they would talk about everything because not talking had certainly screwed them up enough, but here, the first time they really, really need her to come through on that, she failed completely. Thank God he didn't let her carry on with her stupidity too long.

And while she's thanking God, she thanks him for the glee club as well. They were all so accepting and forgiving despite what she did (and despite the fact that she was sort of lying to them). Maybe having people like them and Puck around to remind her that it's not always the end of the world when she messes up (though most of her life had taught her it was), she'll learn not to be so afraid of her mistakes anymore.

She sighs as she parks her car in her driveway. She almost let her fear ruin the few things that were good about her life right now. Maybe she just has too much of it, she thinks. With the baby and the prospect of the future, she feels like fear is becoming a constant state for her (she had even been a bit afraid of singing earlier and she never would have been a few months ago). But she hopes that once she figures some of those big scary things out (like the future and the baby), then maybe she'll stop giving into it in all the ways she has been lately. Though, decisions could still be a ways off, since she wants (_needs_) to make the right ones.

Perhaps, she should find someone to talk to. Or talk to the people in her life a lot more. Maybe it'll ease some of her fears.

-o-o-o-

Puck drives home feeling immensely better than he has in almost two weeks. He feels like a huge weight has been lifted from his shoulders. He knows there's a lot of stuff to come that's going to be hard, but he's the reason this little mini-crisis is over and solved and he feels pretty damn good about that.

He stops for a coffee before heading home because his mom didn't like him drinking it- kept claiming it would stunt his growth and was bad for him despite the fact that she drank it like a fish.

When he gets back in his truck after he gets his drink, he gets a call from Hank. His schedule's been changed. He had been working with this middle-aged guy named Tony, going out on all of his afternoon jobs with him. He did a lot of refrigeration work, which Puck wasn't exactly interested in, even if he knew he had to learn it, so he's happy about Hank saying he was going to start working with him again for a while as of Saturday. But it is kind of weird. So far, Hank had let his guys request Puck's help for set amount of times and when work with one guy ended, another guy would call him and say he needed him for so long, etc. Hank taking him away from someone early (Tony, who he had only been working with for two days, was supposed to have his help for a week), seemed weird. Plus Hank wouldn't tell him what they were doing. He just told him that he'd fill him in when he gets to his house Saturday morning.

Still, the weirdness isn't enough to affect Puck's good mood. Besides, even if there was weirdness, he liked working with Hank. Plus, with Quinn talking to him again, nothing could ruin how awesome this day was.

Until he got home.

The minute Puck walks through the door, his mom starts talking to him a mile a minute (though the bonus of her doing that as she continued to cook dinner was that she didn't notice him hide his now empty coffee cup in his backpack).

Puck plops down at the table as soon as she starts in, preparing for whatever long rant she was going to start.

"I almost forgot that your rehearsal was going long today. You know, you should really leave a note about random schedule changes like that. I called you to ask you to start dinner because I was running late, but once your phone went straight to voicemail I remembered where you were. And speaking of having a bad memory, your grandma might be a little loopy without her pills, but she still remembers that you haven't come with us to see her in over a month. And I know, you have to work pretty much all the time, but you have got to figure out a time to go see her and you have to get Quinn up there too. Your grandma's been saying forever how she wants to meet Quinn. Who, by the way, I just hung up with. She called and explained why she's been dodging us. She said she already talked everything out with you about how she made appointments with adoption agencies and she said the idea of being around us after she had done that made her feel guilty. Which she admitted was ridiculous of her, but once you apparently set her straight today, she came to her sense and has stopped giving into feeling irrationally guilty. I didn't really buy it, but as long as she's not avoiding any of us again and everything is okay between you two, I don't need to know why she was actually avoiding you. Although it would be nice to know. You know, I could help you two avoid whatever caused that problem from occurring again in the future if I knew. But of course I'm just your mother, why would I have a right to know anything?"

Puck zoned out finally around then. He didn't need a guilt trip, he had been having a really good day. He scans the newspaper that's on the table for a few minutes, his mom still telling him something in the background, and as soon as he finds a way to get out of sitting here pretending to listen he's going to take it so that he can maintain his awesome day.

But, before he figures out a decent out that his mom wouldn't take offense to (like his phone ringing or Kelyn coming in and distracting her so he could slip out), he tunes back in when she sets a pot of soup down on the table (food greatly interested him), and this is what he caught:

"Dinner should be finished in about five more minutes, go tell Kelyn," she says, giving him his way out though he wouldn't really mind staying now considering there's food on the table.

He stands up and grabs his back pack to toss in his room on his way to do what his mother asked, but before he makes it the three steps out of the kitchen, his mother calls, "Oh, and I found a house today. That's why I was running late to start dinner. I put an offer down and I called your boss, Hank- he's going to come by while you two are working Saturday and let me know if all the things that need fixing in it are fixable. Because it definitely needs some work, but then it should be a fine house. Don't worry, it has a room for Quinn. Should I have told her that? I completely forgot about it while we were talking."

His mom bought a house? In an afternoon? And it needed a lot of work? And she wants to tell Quinn right now? Damn. Things had been going so well for him today and now he had a feeling that things were about to change and he wouldn't be thinking that for a while longer.

(Here's something you should know: Puck is wrong. His mom and her purchase are not going to take much of a toll on his life at all. However, that doesn't mean days are going to all start going like today where he solved the problem before him and everything worked out. Because him and Quinn have a big decision to make and it's coming faster than either of them are prepared for.)

* * *

**A/N: Thank you so much for reading!**

Next chapter title…I have no idea. I write out outlines for chapters on large note cards and I've had all the ones for this story completed for about a year/year and a half and on the note cards also happens to be where I wrote down the lyrics that I selected as chapter titles. The cards, appear to be missing. Don't worry, I know everything else that happens in this story by heart now so the fact that I don't have my outlines (for now) won't effect the content. But I'm having a very hard time remembering what lyrics I selected so I can't let you all know what they were.

To make up for the lack of a chapter title, I thought I'd let you know some stuff you can expect to read happening in the next chapter. Finn and Quinn will have their talk, Puck and Hank will visit the house his mom is trying to buy, Jessica will have a very important doctor's appointment, and the glee club will head to regional's. All of that will happen after a very important, possibly surprising (depending on how much you know about a baby's development and pregnancy) event that will kick off the chapter right where this one left off- in May's kitchen on Thursday night. All of that might sound kind of lame. I'm sorry. I really don't want to give too much away, just some generalizations of _some_ of the stuff to come.

Okay, I'm going to stop rambling.

**I hope everyone enjoyed the chapter and that you're all having a splendid summer!**

**Please remember, REVIEWS= love. Thank you!**


	20. Chapter 17

**A/N:** I know, I know. I've taken forever getting this updated yet again. As those of you who have checked my profile already know, actually getting some interviews for this school year and having four family friends seriously ill took lots of time away from writing.

**Thank you so much to all of you reviewed last chapter! You guys are awesome! And thank you to everyone who's still reading this story. It's been a very long journey so far and I'm honored that anyone at all is still reading it. **

**Thank you also to everyone who's been wishing me well on the issues I mentioned on my profile. I truly appreciated your support:)**

I believe I forgot to mention it last time because I had lost my outline with my chapter titles, but the lyrical title of this chapter comes from The Killers' song "Losing Touch."

It's a very long chapter and it does not include exactly what I described at the end of last chapter because I had forgotten I had rearranged the outline a bit. I hope it still includes tons of stuff you'll enjoy and I hope the extra-long length will make up for the extended wait for the chapter.

Hope you enjoy the chapter!

* * *

**Cheated Hearts**

* * *

XVII. _Console me in my darkest hour, convince me that the truth is always grey_

(Here's something you should know: They thought they knew and understood the definitions of words like difficult and scared and painful. But they're about to find out that they were wrong.)

"What?" Puck questions his mother. "You bought a house?"

"I didn't say I bought a house. I said I put an offer on one. And didn't I just ask you to go get your sister?" she responds.

"Yes," Puck says, waving it off- saying something important and asking him to do something that wasn't at all pressing was a frequent habit of his mother's. He sits back down and tells her, "Kelyn can wait. More importantly, no, don't tell Quinn anything."

"Why not?" May questions, "I think it'd be a nice thing to tell her when she comes over later."

"She's coming over?" Puck repeats, befuddled.

"I told you that no more than five minutes ago," May returns with a small frustrated sigh. She repeats what she had already told her son (not that it was really a surprise that he wasn't listening), "I invited Quinn over for dinner, but she had already started making herself dinner while we were on the phone. So I mentioned that I just made a chocolate cake and she could come over for dessert and she said something about a bunch of homework, which I assumed you have too, so I told her to just do it with you, here, with home made chocolate cake. She should be over in about an hour or so. I thought it was important that we welcome her back here like nothing happened or changed because of the last couple of weeks."

It's not the most important thing at the moment, but seeing what's sitting on the counter beside his mom, Puck comments, "That cake isn't home made." It was in a plastic container and still had a price sticker on it.

"I'll throw away the box, put it on a plate, an we'll all keep our mouths shut about it," May retorts.

"And you'll keep your mouth shut about the house too, right?" Puck checks.

"I don't see why-" May begins.

"First, because you don't actually have a room for her because you don't own the house yet," Puck interrupts (he also wants to add that his mom may have made an offer on a house she shouldn't have- he was pretty concerned about how much work it might need given she had called his boss). "And second, because things just got good again. Can't we just leave everything the way it is for a while? I don't think she'd be too happy to hear about it right now anyway and I don't want her to know about it until I'm sure she will be happy to hear you looked for a house that would have a room for her too- even if she doesn't want it."

May sighs heavily. She really didn't see the point of waiting. Quinn would need a place to live soon, she found an affordable four bedroom house, it seemed like a perfect solution. Even if they end up giving the baby up for adoption, Quinn will still need a place to go and she's still family and a free place (because of course May wouldn't charge her rent) is better than one that costs. But, regrettably, May supposes she does see her son's point and he knows Quinn better than her so if there's a reason he's fighting her telling Quinn about the house so hard, then she knows it would probably be best to listen to him. (Though that doesn't mean she won't drop a few hints.) "Okay, I won't tell Quinn anything about the house. I'll let you do it whenever you want," she promises. Thoughtfully, she adds, "Though I guess that means we should probably avoid telling Kelyn about it for a while otherwise she'll tell. But, like you said, the house isn't even ours yet so there's no need to tell her yet. Plus we won't be able to move in right away when we do get it, it'll need some work first."

"Exactly how bad is the house," Puck asks, getting really concerned. He didn't think they could afford a very good house to begin with (though apparently his mom had always lied to him about their finances) and now his mom didn't think the house was currently livable? This house thing seemed to be getting worse and worse.

"Oh, it's fine," May waves off and tells him again, "go get your sister for dinner."

This time he does as she asked. All things house related settled for the moment.

-o-o-o-

"It's so good to see you honey," May says, squeezing Quinn tightly. She adds in a barely hushed tone, "You ever try to disappear on me like that again though, I'm going to hunt you down and I won't be as nice about it as Noah probably was."

"Ma,'" Puck admonishes with a groan.

"What? She deserves fair warning that I'd come after her like I'd come after you," May says, releasing Quinn.

"I promise you won't have to," Quinn tells her, though she's honestly not sure if she's telling May the truth.

"Good," May declares, "come on, cake's in the kitchen."

Quinn follows May to the kitchen, walking past Puck in the process. She bites her lip (she's felt his eyes on her since she got here, she supposes maybe he thinks she'll disappear on him again if he doesn't keep an eye on her).

"Kelyn! Quinn's here," May hollers. She pulls a knife out of a drawer and stops, listens, and hears nothing, which isn't right. Talking mostly to herself she begins, "She's not coming? She must be doing something she's not supposed to if she's not coming out." Kelyn liked Quinn- it wasn't like her to stay in her room when the girl was here.

May puts the cake on the table, knife, forks, and plates beside it and tells Quinn, "Help yourself honey." She heads off toward the hallway to find out what her daughter is up to.

Quinn sits down and cuts herself a piece of cake just like May said.

Puck sits down at the chair to her left around the small round table and says, "You know she didn't bake this herself, right?"

"I figured. On top of looking just like the chocolate cakes at Ray's, she mentioned running late to cook dinner so having time to make a cake didn't really fit that," Quinn reasons, digging into her cake.

Puck cuts himself a slice as he comments with a small smile he can't help, "But you came anyway."

"I should have never stopped coming here," she replies with a small smile, knowing that while that was true, she just wanted to be here tonight (most of the time).

"What have I told you about that show?" they hear May say, approaching the kitchen.

"That it's not appropriate for me to watch," Kelyn responds and they can hear her roll her eyes as she's saying it.

May enters the kitchen, Kelyn in tow, and takes a seat at the table as she tells her son, "She was watching _Sons of Anarchy_ again."

"I thought you blocked FX," Puck says.

"I did. She took your laptop from your room and was watching online," May tells him as she cuts herself and Kelyn a piece of cake.

"Kel," he admonishes. "First, you shouldn't be in my room when I'm not here. Second, you should ask to borrow anything of mine. And third, a show about bikers, really?"

"It's better than a show about doctors and nurses," she counters referencing his love of _ER_. "And you won't be mad about me going in your room or using your computer unless you want me to tell everyone what's in your internet history," she adds with a smirk.

Both his mother's and Quinn's eyes are suddenly intently on him and Puck knows exactly what his sister is referring to. He knows he probably looks shifty to them, but that's because he is. He changes the subject, "Mom, did Quinn tell you the baby kicked for the first time?"

"Really?" she exclaims, nearly dropping her fork.

"I was going to wait to say something when she was kicking again," Quinn tells her, shooting Puck a slightly miffed look. She probably should have mentioned that to him. Not that she minded that May knew now, but she just thought it'd be better to say something when May could feel the baby kick.

"When did it happen for the first time?" May asks curiously.

"New Years Eve," Quinn answers.

"Has she been kicking super hard again since glee club?" Puck asks, concerned.

"No, thankfully," Quinn says with a sigh. She explains to May (Kelyn had seemed to lose interest completely), "She started kicking me really hard while I was doing my song for our assignment in glee today. I had to stop singing when she started getting me in my kidneys."

May had been moving her fork, with a piece of cake on it, towards her mouth, but she stops in the action abruptly and asks, "She was kicking you in the kidneys?"

"Yeah," Quinn responds warily. There was something in May's eyes and tone that didn't sound good. "Is it bad she's kicking me there? I mean, I know it doesn't feel good…" she asks worriedly.

May puts her fork down and smoothes her napkin between her hands, glancing down at her lap before sighing and meeting two pairs of nervous eyes. "It might be fine. But…you're not even twenty weeks along yet and she shouldn't be able to kick you there for a while still. I haven't heard of it being typical for a baby to be able to kick the kidneys until week 25 at the earliest," she says regretfully. She's quick to assure, "Just because she is though, it doesn't mean anything is wrong. I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe she's just long for her age. My father was six foot two and your dad Quinn, from his pictures in the paper, seems to be a fairly tall man. Maybe she's just taking after them. Or it could be that you're feeling pain in your kidneys when she kicks because…" May hesitates and lowers her voice to a whisper as she finishes, "you could have a urinary tract infection." She continues speaking normally again, "Many women get them when they're pregnant. I got one with Kelyn. It's uncomfortable, but for the baby it's nothing to worry about. She's probably fine, but just to be sure maybe you should call your doctor in the morning and see what she wants to do. Do your kidneys still hurt?"

"No," Quinn answers quickly, "they stopped hurting as soon as she stopped kicking that direction."

"Well if you feel fine then I'm sure you are," May says, though she's not entirely sure. One of her fellow hygienists in her office thought she was getting kicked in the kidneys when she was fifteen weeks along and it turned out that she was having complications with the pregnancy- she was on bed rest for the rest of it but the baby ended up being fine.

"I got approved for Medicaid earlier this week. I could go to the emergency room right now. I think that's covered by it," Quinn says, panic taking over her every thought.

"If it's not I've got some money saved. Let's go," Puck agrees.

"There's no need for that," May's quick to squash before either of them even manage to stand up. Now she was sorry that she said anything and made them worry. She repeats, "Quinn, if you feel fine then everything is probably fine. It's unusual she'd be able to hit your kidneys this early, but I'm sure it's not indicative of anything serious. At worst, it could mean that, in order for the rest of the pregnancy to go smoothly, you'd need to be on bed rest. And most likely it means you have an infection, which would have no effect on the baby. So both of you, calm down, relax- being anxious is not good for the baby- and do your homework. You'll call your doctor in the morning and move forward based on what she thinks. As an obstetrician, she knows your health and the baby's better than an ER doctor would anyway and she'll be able to give you a more reliable diagnosis. "

"Are you sure?" Quinn asks, needing to hear it again.

"Yes," May says firmly. From what she knows, she's is fairly sure everything is okay- or at least that nothing serious is wrong.

"I guess…" Quinn tries to convince herself, "I do feel fine. And from what I've read about signs that something's wrong, I'm not experiencing any of them." She didn't want to say what signs because she didn't want to explain what spotting was to Kelyn if she had tuned back in to the conversation. But she tells herself that since she's not spotting, or experiencing random sharp pains, or experiencing shortness of breath, she should be fine. (Although, on top of that being completely unconvincing, she feels like an idiot for having no idea that the baby wasn't supposed to be able to kick her in the kidneys at this point in her development. She read about everything the baby was developing each week, but apparently she wasn't reading enough because that didn't come up. She feels so…incompetent.)

If Quinn wasn't going to worry, then Puck decides he isn't either. Because being worried would probably just make Quinn worry and that probably wasn't good for the baby. So it's good that she's clearly trying to accept what his mom said and he should try to do the same.

As Quinn silently tries to reassure herself, Puck tries not to seem as panicked as he feels, and May continues to reason in her head about why the ER wouldn't be a good idea (it'd take all night probably and they have school tomorrow, etc.), Kelyn pipes up in the silence and asks, "If I'm not allowed to watch _Sons of Anarchy_ then can I at least start watching _Gossip Girl_ again?"

Oy, May was going to have to have a talk with her daughter. Not about her TV viewing habits- though they were concerning- but about the baby. After all this time that she's known about the baby, she hadn't expressed an interest in it and at no time more than this moment was it more clear. Here they were talking about the baby possibly being not okay and Kelyn didn't even seem to be paying attention. She's not sure why that would be. When Noah told her how Kelyn handled the news, May had told her therapist, who told her that it would probably just take Kelyn some time to realize what the baby meant so they should just give her some time. May wasn't so sure that that was the right course of action still. But they don't need to get into all of this now so she simply replies, "Fine. But I if I catch you watching anything I've told you not to ever again, you won't be able to watch _Gossip Girl_ either. And you can only watch it if your room is clean." If she's going to let her ten year old watch something she's not sure is entirely appropriate for her, May figures she might as well try to get something good out of it.

"Deal," Kelyn agrees happily. She shovels in her last couple of bites of cake and races as she takes her dish to the sink and runs for her room.

"Don't start cleaning unless you're done with your homework," May calls after her. May sighs heavily and takes in the worried expressions of the two teens at the table. She should have been more careful about what she said. She should have waited until morning to say something so Quinn could call her doctor right away and be reassured. She didn't mean to worry the kids- that's the last thing she wanted. She just opened her big mouth without thinking it through. They couldn't go to the ER tonight- they'd skip their homework and/or school tomorrow because they'd be there all night. Plus it would probably be a waste of time. If Quinn felt fine, she was more than likely, fine. (Although May was worried that perhaps she didn't know nearly as much as she thought she did and maybe something really was wrong.) She tells herself there's no reason to worry and no reason for the kids to either. So, trying to make up for freaking them out, May tells them firmly, "Everything is going to be fine. There's no reason to worry. I shouldn't have even said anything until tomorrow when you could call your doctor right away and she could tell you that it's nothing to be concerned about. It's just going to turn out that she's a bit big for her age or you have an infection. I'm hoping for the former because, oy, let me tell you, having a urinary tract infection while you're pregnant is no picnic. Every time you-"

"Ma'," Puck cuts in, "please stop before you seriously gross me out."

May waves him off, "I wasn't even saying anything…yet." She tries to read the expressions of both of the kids again and checks, "You're not going to worry, right? You know everything will be okay?"

"Yeah," Puck responds first, doing so because he hoped he sounded confident and that it would make Quinn believe everything would be okay. (Though really, he has no idea what any of this means.)

Just ever so slightly delayed, Quinn agrees, "Yes." She doesn't know if she even believes herself. She can't help but worry, but she thinks maybe she can't rule out that things may be okay. Of course she has every worst-case-scenario running through her head, but she's come to trust May and if May doesn't think there's anything bad going on, then she's going to do her best to believe her and wait until tomorrow morning to call her doctor (and not stop at the emergency room on her way home like she had been thinking she'd do).

She doesn't really believe either one of them, but May declares anyway, "Good." Figuring keeping them both occupied would keep their minds off of everything, May suggests, "Quinn would you mind taking a look at Kelyn's math homework? She didn't do so well with it last term and I tried checking it these last couple of weeks but math has never been my subject and it still isn't."

Grateful for the distraction, Quinn agrees easily, "Sure. Does she have it with her in her room?"

"Yeah, and if she's cleaning so she can watch that show instead of doing her homework-"

"I'll make sure she gets back to her homework," she finishes. Quinn takes her plate to the sink and heads for Kelyn's room. (As she walks, she tries to re-evaluate how she feels. There's no pain anywhere in her stomach/abdominal region. There's no pain anywhere but her feet, which has been pretty typical these days. She's not having any trouble breathing. She's not spotting. She feels absolutely fine. Which means _she_ should be fine, right?)

Back in the kitchen, Puck checks with his mother, "Are you sure everything's fine?"

"Yes," May promises. She meets her son's eyes and asks, "You know I'd never let anything happen to either one of them just like I wouldn't let anything happen to you or Kelyn, right?"

Puck nods his head, glancing down at the table top. He exhales and agrees, "Yeah." He gets what his mom is saying and if he really thought about it, he had known for a long time that May wasn't just trying to make Quinn feel like family anymore, for May, Quinn was family (as was the baby- no matter what happened in the end). As nice as it is that his mom is reassuring him about that sentiment now, it does nothing for his fear.

May takes her son's empty plate and stacks it on her own. She stands up and tells him, "Do your homework," and proceeds to do the dishes like this night were the same as any other.

Puck tries to pretend too.

Meanwhile Quinn checks over Kelyn's homework, which she was already done with. She talks Kelyn through some corrections and considers talking to Kelyn about the baby (it was starting to be odd, how she didn't seem interested in the baby at all). But she decides that tonight it's probably best if she makes an effort to distract herself from thinking about the baby at all otherwise she'll just spend the whole night worrying and that certainly wouldn't be good for the baby.

When she finally returns to the kitchen, Quinn finds Puck still sitting at the table only now he's doing his homework. This had been the original plan for the night- doing her homework with Puck- so she does just that. They take a break after about an hour because Puck has to go play Kelyn a song in order to get her to agree to go to bed (nearly a nightly occurrence), but then they're both back to work for a couple of hours more, during which May goes to bed after promising them both again that everything will be okay and telling them to call it a night soon.

Not too long after his mom goes to bed, Puck gives up on being able to do his chemistry homework on his own (and he wasn't going to ask Quinn for help – she didn't need more on her plate right now). Quinn also decides that apparently nothing will be staying in her head for her first economics exam tomorrow (there's too much weighing on it).

After a good ten minutes of sitting in silence, staring at books that were no longer open, Puck asks, "You okay?"

"Yeah," she answers.

"Liar," he accuses with a smirk.

She smiles a little in return. Of course she was lying. Nothing about right now was okay. She confesses, "I can't believe I had no idea that that wasn't right earlier."

He shrugs and offers, "No one can know everything. And you know plenty of other stuff."

Quinn doesn't respond. If she says what she's thinking (she's not good enough, to ever possibly keep the baby) she knows Puck will just try to reassure her. As sweet as it is, in the end she knows it won't change how she feels. She feels like she failed her baby today and nothing is going to make her feel differently.

"I should go home," she says instead, "it's late."

"Yeah," he agrees though he doesn't feel good about letting her go home where he knows she's alone (not technically, but after the night they've had and what they still have ahead of them, her home just doesn't sound like a place he should let her be). But he can imagine (vividly) how badly asking her to stay the night would go- especially the part where he offers for her to take his bed. So he refrains from bringing up the idea at all.

She gathers her things and heads for the door, Puck close behind. He holds her bag for her as she puts on her coat, hands it back to her when she's done (it's become a routine). But this time, when he hands her bag back to her, he let his hand brush hers in the exchange rather than avoiding such an occurrence.

She meets his eyes at the contact. This morning she wasn't even talking to him. And for a lot of this afternoon, every time she met his eyes, she couldn't think of much more than kissing him. But now, everything was different again, and meeting his eyes makes her feel sad and scared (because, what if something's wrong?).

"Everything is going to be fine," he promises sincerely in the silence that surrounds them.

She nods a little in response and leans forward and hugs him quickly, trying to blink away the tears forming in her eyes before she lets go so he won't see them.

Successfully getting the tears at bay (for a little while longer at least) she pulls away and tells him, "I'll call you as soon as I talk to the doctor in the morning." She opens the door and heads out with him following close behind. They walk to her car in silence and only exchange a simple goodnight when she gets in her car.

She manages to get all the way home and park her car before the tears start. She tries to tell herself everything will be fine, but she's too terrified to believe it. She doesn't sleep much that night.

-o-o-o-

As soon as the clock hits seven, Quinn calls her doctor. She had been ready for school and pacing around her room for nearly a half an hour just waiting for the second her doctor's office opened and she could get some answers.

As soon as someone answers she tells them, "I need an appointment right away. I think something's wrong."

"Okay. The doctor isn't in yet so I'm going to transfer you to one of our nurse practitioners so she can try to figure out what's going on and figure out the right course of action from there. What was your name? So I can bring her your file…" the receptionist lays out.

Quinn tells them her name and after a minute on hold a new voice comes on the line, "Hi, Quinn. Why don't you tell me what's going on?"

Quinn recaps what happened the previous afternoon and how May (who she has trouble describing and settles for "the baby's grandmother") told her that something could be wrong because she shouldn't be getting kicked in the kidneys yet.

"Well, the baby's grandmother is right. Your baby shouldn't be able to kick you there quite yet. It does sound like something is going on but I don't want you to panic, it's most likely something really simple. Okay?" the nurse says reassuringly. She asks, "Have you felt any pain around your kidneys since the kicking or can you think of any before it?"

"No. It was just that one time," Quinn answers.

"Have you experienced any spotting?"

"No."

"Any severe pains anywhere else?"

"No."

"Any shortness of breath?"

"No."

"Any chills, nausea, or vomiting?"

"No."

"Have you been urinating more frequently lately?"

"Yes," Quinn answers but she's not sure if she should add on that she thought that was normal for pregnant women to go more as their pregnancy progressed.

"Have you been urinating more or less than usual lately?"

Quinn hesitates because she thought this was the question she just answered. "More," she responds tentatively.

The nurse sighs a little and concludes, "Well it doesn't sound like there's any major complication going on. I'm pretty sure you've just got a urinary tract infection. Normally you'd be experiencing more discomfort with that, but it sounds like the baby's kicking- which I believe she was probably getting around your bladder and not your kidneys otherwise you'd have much more serious symptoms- allowed you to catch it early. You've got nothing to worry about. We'll just run a urinalysis to confirm that's what it is, give you a prescription for antibiotics, and you'll be fine in no time and the baby won't be affected by any of it."

Quinn lets out a sigh of relief (not completely relived yet- they don't know what it is for sure yet- but feeling much better).

"Since you have school today and your infection appears to be in the early stages it isn't that pressing of a matter, I don't think it's anything to miss school for. Plus, if you come in during your lunch and leave a urine sample, I can put a rush on a test and have it for you by the end of the day. And I can fit you in to see the doctor at four so we can make sure nothing else troublesome is going on. We should have the results by then. Does that sound okay?"

Quinn had been hoping to get this resolved sooner, but if the nurse didn't seem worried she supposed she should trust that, right? She knows that stress isn't good for the baby so she tells herself that she should stop panicking because the nurse seemed to know what was going on and it wasn't anything serious so she should just trust that. "Yeah, that'd be fine," she says and instantly wants to take it back and skip first period to go to the doctor, but she probably shouldn't miss her classes anyway and she needed to calm down and stop worrying so she refrains from changing her mind.

"Great. Your appointment is scheduled, we'll see you whenever you have lunch and then again at four," the nurse responds. Kindly, she offers, "Try not to worry. If I thought that it was anything you should be worried about I would have had you come in immediately. So try to go about your day like usual okay? Stress is bad for the baby and you have nothing to worry about anyway."

"Thank you," Quinn says gratefully because she really needed to hear that. Though by the time she hangs up only seconds later she already feels worry prickling at her again.

She calls Puck and May and tells them what the nurse told her.

"Okay, I'll drive you over there at lunch and then… I'll call Tony and tell him I can't make it to work today. He was going to work until eight so we could both get some extra hours in, but I'll just tell him I can't. He'll be cool," Puck tells her.

"No," both May and Quinn say in unison.

May pauses and lets Quinn go first, "You shouldn't skip work for this. From what the nurse said, it sounds like all the appointment will consist of is them telling me my test results and giving me a prescription for an antibiotic and then I'll be done. That's not worth you missing nearly five hours of work for."

"I agree," May chimes in.

Puck doesn't like it, but he knows it's two against one so there's no way he'd win. So instead of arguing he offers, "But I don't think you should go alone."

"I'll go," May offers readily, "I'd like to meet your doctor anyway, just to check her out- though I've heard good things about her. And besides, I get off work at three today and Kelyn has dance so I have the afternoon free anyway. Is it okay with you Quinn, if I go?"

"Yeah, of course," she says politely though, honestly, the idea of going to an obstetrician with the mother of the guy she…well, Puck's mother makes her feel a little awkward. But she felt awkward about Puck going with her too- an obstetrician's exam room feels like it should be more of a private place to her- but once they were there she was glad to have Puck there last time and she supposes she could feel the same about having May there. Plus it was a nice gesture so she wasn't going to refuse.

"Okay, I guess I'll just take you during lunch then and go to work this afternoon," Puck agrees though he's still not happy about any of it. He supposes he needs to accept that they don't have anything to worry about so there was no reason for him to be nervous anymore or to miss work.

"I'll pick you up at your house at three-thirty," May tells Quinn, "see you then honey and try not to worry. Like the nurse told you- everything is fine."

"Yeah, see you later," Quinn agrees.

"And I'll see you soon," Puck says.

"Yep. We both better head to school or we might be late," Quinn says as she grabs her bag.

"We have twenty minutes. Nerd. I'm stopping at 7-11 first. You want anything?" he asks, trying to be normal again (not let the last twelve or so hours get to him).

"No," she says leaving her room and heading down the stairs, "and if I were you I wouldn't stop. You're going to be late."

"No I'm not," he denies, looking around his room for his chemistry book.

"Uh huh," she says doubtfully, stopping in the kitchen and grabbing her already made lunch. She puts it in her bag, not even noticing her dad sitting at the table, newspaper stretched out in front of him. "Well, in case you are late and I don't see you before then- you'll meet me in the parking lot at the start of lunch, right? So we can go straight to the doctor's?" She heads back out the kitchen door and for the front door, not noticing she had caught the attention of the person she hadn't been aware was in the kitchen with her.

"Yes," he says and he feels like adding on that there was no way he wasn't going to see her until lunch- he'd never let that happen (especially after all the time they just spent apart). Half a day was far too long to go without seeing her. But he finally found his book and if he's going to prove her wrong about being late he's got to get going so he doesn't say that and instead says goodbye.

In her haste to make it to her first period class on time, Quinn manages to stop worrying for a little bit. But as soon as she sits down and her teacher starts talking, the panic settles in again.

What if she should have gone to the emergency room last night and now whatever was wrong couldn't be fixed? What if the nurse she talked to cheated her way through nursing school and had no idea what she was talking about? What if it wasn't an infection? What if both her and the baby were in some serious danger?

Before she got too close to bursting into hysterical tears during the middle of her AP English class, Quinn tries to remind herself, like a mantra in her head, that she didn't have a single symptom to be concerned about. Other than the knot her stomach was in over everything, she felt perfectly healthy.

Predictably, Puck finds her as soon as first period ends.

"You look awful," he says, instead of something normal like "hello."

She glares at him.

He tries to backtrack, "I mean, you don't look-"

"Save it," she cuts him off, "backtracking won't help you now." She adds, pulling books out of her locker, "Besides you're not wrong and you look awful too." She offers the reason for her much less than stellar appearance, "I didn't get any sleep last night."

"Me either," he concurs and adds with a smirk, "And you know, I already hadn't been sleeping for like practically two weeks cause there was this girl avoiding me."

She rolls her eyes a little, shuts her locker and turns to him. Thoughtfully, she comments, "It feels a lot longer than just twenty four hours ago that that was going on."

"I know," he responds, feeling exactly the same. He doesn't think he'll ever get used to how quickly everything can change. He takes her books from her and holds them with his left arm and takes her hand with his free one and starts to head in the direction of her next class.

She glances at the ground, so her hair will hide her smile.

(This- walking her to class- happens for every period for the rest of the day.)

During his second period, Puck sort of fills Kurt in on what's going on (he figures they should tell someone so no one worries about why they won't be at lunch). He doesn't tell him much, just that what happened the previous day (with the baby kicking Quinn in the kidneys) wasn't supposed to be happening yet so they're seeing a doctor- samples for testing at lunch, appointment (hopefully with results) in the afternoon.

Kurt's not sure how to respond (mainly because he's not really clear on what's going on), but he offers, "In case I don't see Quinn before you leave at lunch, make sure she knows that I'll be hoping everything's alright."

"I will. And thanks," Puck responds simply.

Lunch comes slowly, but it does come. Puck planned on going into the doctor's office with her, but (especially since peeing in a cup isn't a two person activity) she tells him to go get them some lunch instead so they don't have to after she's done, thus making sure that they should return to school on time (another thing he's not particularly happy about).

Quinn's disappointed that when she tells the woman at the front desk her name, she's simply handed a cup and given directions to the bathroom. Her whole ten minutes there she doesn't even cross paths with her doctor. She's not sure what she had been hoping for, but…walking out of the building still not knowing anything at all didn't help her feel any less terrified than she had been feeling all day.

They don't have too much time left before lunch ends, but they hurry back to school so they can spend a few minutes with their friends. (Again, this was Quinn's idea upon Puck telling her that he "took care of their absence." She was concerned that his explanation only left everyone with more questions.)

"Are you and the baby okay?" Mercedes is quick to demand once they're in earshot of the table.

"We don't know anything yet," Quinn answers taking the empty seat next to Kurt.

Confused, Tina asks, "What was the point of going to the doctor now then? 'Cause Kurt said that Puck said that you're going later too."

"I had to give them samples," Quinn responds vaguely. She tries to assure so everyone doesn't get too carried away, "Everything is probably fine. It might just be this common thing that happens during pregnancy and they needed to run some tests to confirm."

Naturally, due to the lack of clear information, everyone is still utterly confused. "So what do they think is the reason you were in so much pain yesterday then?" Artie asks, trying to understand what Quinn was explaining.

"Well-" Quinn begins, not sure what to say. She didn't really want to explain all the details because, as they're finishing lunch, who really wants to hear about how she just had to go pee in a cup? It felt embarrassing to tell them what the nurse strongly suspected was going on with her.

"They think her pee's infected," Puck interjects, to Quinn's horror.

Mouth dropped open in shock, she's not too stunned to react by slapping his arm-_hard_.

"Ow!" Puck exclaims. He rubs his arm where she hit him and reminds her of a conversation that felt like it was from forever ago, "What did I tell you about hitting me?"

She recalls the conversation easily and rolls her eyes as she responds, "Please, _everyone_ knows you wouldn't hit me back." She continues, still mad, "And more importantly that's not what a urinary tract infection is, not exactly." To the rest of the table she adds, "They're common when you're pregnant and apparently how badly the kicking hurt yesterday may have been a sign that I'm in the early stages of one. It can be easily fixed with antibiotics though. If that's what it is."

"When will you find out if that's what it is?" Mercedes asks.

"They should know by my appointment, at four," she answers, all of her anxiety crashing back into her (being pissed at Puck had been a very brief relief from it).

As if he could sense that she was back to being terrified, Puck takes Quinn's hand in his. Only, unlike yesterday, he doesn't hold her hand underneath the table, hidden from all of their friends. Her hands are on top of the table, she's wringing them nervously, and he simply pulls her left one away from her right and intertwines her fingers with his like it's the most natural thing to do in the world.

Her fear, being so close to being all-consuming, doesn't let her think anything of it past the fact that she needed it and it was nice (she definitely doesn't consider what everyone will think about it).

But the rest of the group isn't surprised and they don't need to speculate. They had known what was happening in front of them for a long time now.

"Well," Mercedes begins, speaking up again, "I'm going to keep praying for y'all until you get good news at your appointment."

Everyone else chimes in their agreement (and everyone's surprised to hear Finn concur with a small but genuine, "yeah").

Quinn tries to muster a smile to show how grateful she is for their support as she says, "Thank you," but she just can't right now.

Puck walks her to class again and her schedule's the same as it is every day, but she honestly doesn't know what class she's in following lunch.

She's been trying so hard to stop herself from thinking about it (again- she had already spent all last night worrying). So far today she had managed to stop herself before she got too far consumed by all of the fears in her mind, but she's failing at that right now.

What if something is actually wrong? What if she's losing her baby like Addie lost hers? Being pregnant hasn't exactly had a good effect on her life. In some ways, sure it has, but in a lot of ways being pregnant at sixteen has been…if she's being honest, it's felt like a punishment. At first for risking her heart on a guy that didn't used to seem like he deserved it, but more so for the person she was and all of the horrible things she did just to become someone she didn't like. But even if being pregnant at this point in her life is the furthest thing from an ideal situation and even if she's probably going to have to give the baby away, the idea of losing her makes her feel more terrified than she thought was humanly possible.

She tries to stop herself from these horrible thoughts before she has a melt down in the middle of Pre Calc. The nurse didn't seem at all concerned that anything could be going on that would lead her to lose the baby, she reminds herself, so there's no reason to be thinking about the absolute worst case scenario.

(She really has to stop doing this herself. She's given in to her fear twice today and with the whole avoiding Puck thing because she was scared, she had promised herself she wouldn't let her fears get to her anymore.

Plus, thanks to her worrying, she now had no idea what was going on in two of her classes, which she knows she's going to stress about and stress isn't good for the baby so she's got to control herself better and not do this anymore.)

Quinn makes it to the end of the school day (barely). She's pretty sure she tanked her econ exam, but it was her last class of the day and she was satisfied to know that at least she didn't burst into tears at any point during the day.

She's at her locker, putting books back in, when Puck finds her at the end of the day.

"How is this bag so heavy when you don't have to take home any books anymore?" he questions picking it up and realizing how deceptively hefty it was.

She shrugs and shuts her locker as she supposes, "Because I come to school prepared rather than coming without so much as a pen."

"Hey, I have a pen," he defends, "I even have a binder now. With dividers and paper and everything."

She falls into step behind him and unzips his backpack deciding to check for herself. She does find a binder, but upon pulling it out and looking through it, she realizes, "There's nothing in here but blank paper."

"Yeah, I kind of keep forgetting I have it," Puck admits, "besides, putting work for a class in a textbook makes way more sense. You have to take the book to class anyway most of the time."

"But something that's been shoved in a textbook doesn't look as presentable as something that's been stored in a binder," Quinn argues, pausing at the door to the parking lot to put her coat on.

"We're in high school, who cares about presentable? Most of my teachers are just happy to see that I turned something in," Puck counters as he opens the door and goes through it to hold it open for Quinn.

"Of course you would think that," she says with a roll of her eyes. With a playful smile she adds, "Slacker."

"Geek," he returns, smiling.

As nice of a distraction _this_ is, it only lasts until he's walked her to her car. She hits the unlock button on her keyless remote and tries to let the fear rising within her get to her again.

He puts her bag in her back seat, shuts the door and joins her standing behind the car.

"I wish I was going with you," he tells her sincerely, a little bit of tightness to his voice because the fact that he wasn't going was still pissing him off.

"I know," she says like it's a promise, because she does know (how much he _cares_). She tries to be confident as she continues, "But you won't be missing anything, because everything will be alright." She can't help but add on, her voice sounding like a plea, "Right?"

"Of course it will be," he responds immediately and hoping he sounds as sure as he knows she needs him to.

He moves to wrap his arms around her in a hug at the same time she moves to do the same. He doesn't have a reason of doing it; doesn't think about most things before he does them. She just really needed a hug. So he wraps his arms around her, holds on tight, and rubs a hand over her back (though her coat is so thick- it is snowing out after all- that he's not sure she could feel it). She clings to him, head half buried in his chest, eyes closed trying to hang on to this soothing feeling, trying to sink into it so maybe she'll still be okay in an hour when she's sitting in the waiting room of the doctor's office.

Some of the glee club approaches (Rachel, Artie, Kurt, Mercedes, Tina- the rest all having sporting practices to be at after school), but they stop walking towards the pair that was their destination when they're still several cars away. For some, they freeze because the hug they're witnessing makes them afraid. What if they're comforting each other because they got bad news? And for the others, they freeze because it seems too intimate to intrude on.

Rachel pauses, like the others, but it's snowing outside and she has solo ideas she needs to get back inside and discuss with Mr. Schue before he sneaks out of school on her (again) so she's not waiting out here forever. She only pauses for half a minute before marching on through the snow- the others following because if Rachel was going to interrupt then there was no point continuing to wait.

"Oh good, we caught you," Rachel says as she approaches (she didn't want to completely sneak up on them).

Puck and Quinn unravel from each other, though he's happy to note that she doesn't jump away like she's been caught and, in fact, she doesn't even really move away from him at all, just to his side to face their friends (though she does let go, but then again so did he).

"We were hoping we weren't too late," Rachel continues.

"Yeah, we just wanted to say good luck again," Mercedes adds on.

"And call us or text us as soon as you know anything," Rachel insists.

"Or come over or tell us to come to you if you need anything at all," Kurt offers.

"Thank you," Quinn says gratefully.

"Yeah," Puck adds, though he knows that most of this is for her (but that's okay, that's better than okay actually because she really needs people in her life who will care).

They say goodbye and everyone heads their separate ways, all of them adding again that they hope everything will be alright.

She hugs him again, quickly, and then gets in her car and heads home to wait while he heads off to work.

Puck's distracted as he works, but Tony doesn't seem to notice.

Quinn only has a little less than thirty minutes before May should be picking her up by the time she gets home. She should use this time to eat something again (like she usually does), but she's too nervous to eat. She could finally answer one of Jessica's calls, but she didn't want her to worry, she had medical problems of her own to deal with, so she continues to ignore the calls that have started back up (every fifteen minutes since school let out).

She paces her room a little, chews on her nails (old habit she thought had been broken by her mom long ago), and she tries to distract herself with watching the news figuring that violence and tragedy would easily take her mind off of everything. But when she turns the news on they're doing fluff pieces about a woman who won the mega lottery, a story that is followed by one about a dog and she's not sure what was special about the dog because she found herself completely unable to pay attention anymore despite her great effort to.

Finally, she just gives up, puts her coat back on, and heads down to wait for May on the sidewalk. She paces partially to keep warm and partially out of nerves.

May's five minutes late and she starts apologizing as soon as she gets in the car. "I'm so sorry I'm late. Kelyn left her dance clothes at home even though I reminder her about them this morning and she knows that if she's going to make it to her class on time, she has to bring them with her to school. So we had to race home and then race over to her classes. She was a little late. And all that made me a little late," she rambles apologetically.

"It's fine," Quinn assures, "we're still going to be early to the appointment."

"Sure, but me being late meant you were waiting outside longer so that I don't come to your door to get you and it's freezing out," May responds, feeling guilty that she didn't think to call and tell Quinn she was running late when she knew Quinn would probably be waiting outside.

May doesn't say it like she's accusing Quinn of anything, but Quinn feels bad anyway. She feels like May might have the impression that the reason she waits out on the curb has to do with May. So she offers, just to make sure May knows that isn't it, "It's fine. I like waiting outside." She adds, her tone resigned, "If they don't want to be a part of my life, then they shouldn't get to meet the people that do. It's just easier…to wait outside."

"I know," May empathizes. She smiles a little and suggests, "But I think you should make anyone picking you up call when they get to your house so you don't keep waiting outside. I don't like you spending so much time in the cold. It's bad enough it's cold and flu season, you don't need do anything extra to risk getting sick."

Quinn smiles at her (as much as she can manage today), grateful for her concern. May launches into telling her a story about a woman she used to work with who used to go outside on her breaks to smoke and how she frequently ended up sick with a variety of illnesses. It's almost a decent distraction.

-o-o-o-

They're ten minutes early for the appointment and despite her appointment being at four, Quinn's name isn't called until four fifteen. It feels like the longest twenty-five minutes of her life, sitting there in the waiting room simply _waiting_. May, God bless her, tries to keep her calm/entertained. She picks up an old _US_ magazine that's sitting in the waiting room and comments on nearly everything in it, ranging from the actual celebrity gossip to the ads filling the other half of the pages.

When her name is finally called to go back, Quinn takes a deep breath (trying to calm her nerves) before she stands up and follows the nurse, May following her close behind.

The nurse weighs her and leads her to a room and takes her blood pressure. She leaves Quinn's chart in the door as she leaves saying, "The doctor should be with you shortly." And just like that the nurse is gone and Quinn's left even more worried than she had been because shouldn't the nurse have asked her some questions? Or if it was just a urinary tract infection as discussed over the phone, couldn't the nurse have just told her that?

Thankfully, May dives into conversation immediately. "You know, I still weigh more than you."

That's just too shocking to stay completely absorbed by her worries. "That can't be right, you look great," Quinn responds, completely meaning it (plus May was ever so slightly- a half an inch or so- shorter than her). May couldn't be more than a size six, Quinn figured, and she was just a day shy of being twenty weeks pregnant (and certainly looked pregnant now), May couldn't possibly weigh more than her.

"That's nice of you honey, but I never really lost the weight I gained having Kelyn. I had a hard time finding time to try to at first, what with two kids to take care of and one of them being Noah-always a trouble maker – and Kelyn was sick a lot when she was a baby. There was a breathing thing and then a rash and then an ear infection. It seemed never-ending. Then their father left and there were so many other things to deal with that making the effort to lose the weight stopped crossing my mind…until I was older and you know, it gets harder to lose weight as you get older," May recalls. Thoughtfully, she continues, "I've even been using a treadmill as part of my therapy, my psychiatrist recommended it, and you know, it hasn't even made the slightest difference to my weight."

Thinking of her own mother and similar comments she had made, Quinn suggests, "Maybe you have a thyroid problem."

"Maybe. I haven't been to the doctor in a long time now, I should probably go and get a complete physical," she considers. She has a good health plan as part of her job, but she didn't get sick too often so she rarely saw a doctor and when she did it had always been for something specific. But her mother died of cancer and she knows her grandparents had their fair share of health problems so May had actually been thinking about it for a while now, that she should get checked out just to be cautious. (After all, she could end up being a grandmother soon and if that happened even more people would be depending on her to be around and she didn't want anything preventing her from not being there for them.)

The doctor finally comes in and greets, "Hi Quinn." She notices the extra person in the room and extends her hand, introducing herself, "Hi, I'm Dr. Massey."

"It's nice to meet you," May returns, shaking the woman's hand and offering, "I'm May Puckerman- the father of the baby's mother." It's kind of a mouthful, but "grandmother" doesn't exactly feel like the right title either.

"It's nice to meet you too," Dr. Massey returns with a friendly smile. She takes a seat on the rolling stool and opens Quinn's chart. She takes a glance at it and looks back up. She looks to Quinn and hesitates. She turns around, to May sitting in the chair on the opposite wall and suggests, "Mrs. Puckerman, perhaps you should be over here, for Quinn."

It's a rolling chair, so May doesn't hesitate to do as the doctor suggested and roll it on over to Quinn's side, next to the table the nurse told her to sit on. Though Quinn can tell that May is just as concerned by the fact that the doctor wanted her near as she is.

"Quinn, I think absolutely everything is fine," she begins assuring. But then she continues, "so I don't want you to panic or start thinking anything is wrong…but, you don't have a urinary tract infection like we thought."

May takes Quinn's hand as Quinn splutters, "But, then…what's wrong? Because I thought the baby can't kick me in the kidneys but I was having sharp pains and it felt like she was doing that and…what does it mean?"

"I don't know what it is for sure, but I have a theory," the doctor says evenly. She reminds, "I don't think you have anything to worry about here though. It definitely doesn't seem to be anything serious so try to stay calm, okay?" The doctor waits and Quinn gives a small nod, though she doesn't think she's going to be able to truly stay calm. Dr. Massey continues, "I was looking over your medical history, trying to figure out what might be going on, and…you broke a rib, right?"

"Yeah, when I was in eighth grade. During a gymnastics class," Quinn answers.

The doctor's brows furrow, "You don't usually hear about a broken rib occurring from a non- full contact sport."

Slightly embarrassed, Quinn admits, "I kind of turned it into a full contact sport on that occasion."

"Okay," the doctor says, moving on and getting up and moving around the room in the process, "well, I think I know what's going on, but I'm going to need to do an ultrasound to confirm so change into this gown and I'll be back in a few minutes with the machine and we'll see if I'm right."

Once the doctor leaves, Quinn gets up wordlessly and heads behind the curtain area in the back corner to change. Just like she felt uncomfortable changing with Puck in the room, she feels a little uncomfortable with May being there (but for very different reasons). But she doesn't ask May to do anything like she had Puck, after all, May's back was already to the changing area thanks to its position by the table.

While she's changing, May asks, "So what happened that led to a broken rib in your gymnastics class?"

"I wasn't very nice," Quinn admits, "not at all. And there was this girl in the class who really hated me because I was mean to her and I overheard her trying to talk the other girls in the class into moving the spring board so that I would miss it the next time it was my turn on the horse. I told my parents about it and my dad said, "A Fabray would never stand for that kind of treatment." I needed to get even, set an example with her of how I should be treated, respected. So at the next class I tumbled into her on purpose. She didn't get hurt from that, but it kind of started a fight and she ended up with a broken nose and I got shoved into a balance beam and broke my rib."

"That's awful that your parents would give you such bad advice," May declares. She disliked these people more and more the more she heard about them.

True, her parents were pretty terrible people. But she listened to them. She doesn't want to be that person anymore, she's not that person anymore. So she confesses, "I knew it was wrong to listen to them though, and I did it anyway."

"Not being a product of your environment takes time. You were only in eighth grade," May offers wisely.

Quinn doesn't know how to respond to that. She knows May is trying to make her feel better, but she honestly doesn't believe she should feel better about knowingly doing awful things just because it was what her parents wanted. So rather than saying anything at all, she simply comes out from the changing area and heads back to the table.

"That gown is so much better than the stuff my doctor gave me last time I saw him," May comments, "though it has been a while so they could have changed. But what he gave me to change into was paper. Is that cloth? It looks like cloth."

"Yeah it is. And this is actually better than the one they gave me last time I was here. The last one was like a hospital gown- open in the back," Quinn says, grateful for the change of topic, and checking the tie on the side of the gown again (it was a wrap-style gown and it was just a bit big, which made it feel like it was revealing more than she wanted it to).

Dr. Massey finally returns, tugging the ultrasound machine through the door behind her. She has it all set up and is searching for confirmation of her theory within a couple of minutes.

Quinn chews on her lower lip anxiously as the doctor moves the wand around her stomach, which is probably twice the size it was last time she was here.

May takes Quinn's hand, a gesture to try and keep her calm.

"Okay," the doctor drawls out. She smiles and informs them, "First, I want you to know, the baby is perfect. She's healthy, she's developing just as she should be."

Quinn lets out a small sigh of relief- not a huge one, she can't until she finds out why yesterday happened.

"Second, I was right," Dr. Massey continues. She moves the wand up towards Quinn's ribs and points out on the monitor, "That's the rib you broke there- at the bottom. It's a bit hard to see on here, but you may notice that it doesn't really have the shape it's supposed to and that's because, when you broke that rib, it didn't heal right. It's a tiny bit unusual your baby would be able to hit your ribs at this point, but given how tiny and compact you are…well, it's not unusual for women your size to get hit there. Given your past injury and the fact that it's not healed properly, it's going to hurt a lot any time she gets you there. And you probably thought that it was your kidneys she was hitting because I would assume the pain would radiate throughout your ribcage, masking the point of origin for the pain."

"So…" May begins, not totally clear on what was being said, "her rib isn't right? Is that dangerous? Is there some way to get it fixed?"

"Her rib is fine," Dr. Massey assures, "it's just that since it healed wrong, it's sensitive. Normally it wouldn't be a problem. There's no outward bruising and you haven't had trouble or pain from it in the last couple of years, have you Quinn?"

"No," she answers unable to think of a single time since it broke that it had hurt.

"So it's fine and no action needs to be taken towards fixing it- even if you did want to do that we'd have to re-break and re-set it and that's absolutely not advisable while you're pregnant. But for this pregnancy and probably any pregnancy after this, once the baby is big enough that it can kick you there- which, since you're small, will be just a tad early- it's going to hurt. Maybe, eventually, once enough time has passed, it won't be a sensitive area for you anymore, but it's hard to tell how long something like that will take," Dr. Massey explains, answering May's question thoroughly and patiently.

"Could the kicking break her rib again?" May asks because kicking and a previously broken bone seemed like it could lead to another break to her.

"No. It's very unlikely the baby would be able to do that. On the off chance that her kicking starts to do some damage though, you'll notice some bruising on the skin around your rib and if you ever do- whether you're pregnant or not- get yourself to a hospital right away," she answers. She waits a beat to see if any more questions or concerns will come to either woman. When they both stay silent, she concludes, "Okay then. You're fine Quinn. The baby is fine. And I'm sorry to say that it's just going to hurt like hell when she kicks you in that rib." She takes the wand away from Quinn's stomach, making the image of the baby disappear on the monitor, and finishes up putting things away as she continues, "Some women find that their baby kicks or moves a lot more when they drink or eat something in particular or that their baby will calm down for certain things too. It can even be a movement or position on your part or talking to her or something like that too so you may want to try to pay attention to what gets her kicking you in that direction, what seems to keep her calm, etc. so you can avoid some of the pain."

Sonogram equipment now put away neatly back on the cart, the gel cleaned off of Quinn's stomach, the doctor turns to both women with a smile and checks, "So, any more questions or concerns?"

"No," Quinn answers, finally finding her voice after spending the last several moments trying to wrap her head around what the doctor was saying (trying to accept and believe her when she said everything was okay), "Thank you."

"No problem," Dr. Massey assures, "any time you're concerned about absolutely anything, no matter how small, do exactly what you did- call, and come in. Okay? That's what I'm here for."

Quinn nods, and smiles a little in thanks.

"It was a pleasure to meet you Mrs. Puckerman," Dr. Massey says, shaking her hand again. She shakes Quinn's hand and tells her, "Quinn, I'll see you two weeks from next Monday for your regularly scheduled appointment. We'll check in on your baby again, take blood and run some tests again, the usual. Okay?"

"Yeah, see you then," she responds.

Dr. Massey leaves with a friendly smile wishing them a good night.

Quinn promptly gets off the table and heads for the corner, draws the curtain around her to change back into her clothes.

"Well that was good news," May declares. Sympathetically, she adds, "Though I wish there was something they could do for you so it didn't hurt so much every time she happens to get you in your rib."

"Yeah," Quinn responds distractedly, tugging on her clothes as fast as she can (trying desperately not to let the thoughts in her mind exist). She notices as she gets dressed that her hands are shaking so she asks, "Can you text Puck and let him know everything is okay?"

May thought that was a little odd. Didn't Quinn want to talk to him about all of it? Though he was working and maybe a conversation was best left to later. Why Quinn wouldn't text him herself though seemed strange to May. (Maybe she was just over thinking it. Maybe Quinn just wanted him to know immediately and obviously she couldn't text and get dressed at the same time. Or at least she hoped that's all it was.) "Sure," she agrees and gets out her phone to text her son hoping it will end his worrying.

After she's got her clothes back on, Quinn stops before coming out from behind the curtain. She takes two deep breaths and forces a smile on her face (it feels so odd now- a fake smile- it's been so long since she's had to use one). She pulls the curtain back and May stands and heads for the door saying, "I think they're closing." They get to the hallway and see one of the nurses heading for the exit. "You know, you're lucky you have a doctor that squeezes you in on such short notice," May comments as they head for the same exit as the nurse, "although I suppose all obstetricians have to be that flexible."

When they get to the parking lot, they're surprised to see three familiar faces waiting out in the cold.

"Oh wasn't that nice of them," May says, mostly to herself as she sees the kids.

"What are you guys doing here?" Quinn asks of Rachel, Kurt, and Mercedes, not understanding how they found her (though she's happy to see Rachel with Kurt and Mercedes- maybe a friendship was finally starting to form).

Rachel jumps in before the other two can speak declaring, "We wanted to be here for you and find out if you're okay."

"And we found you," Kurt continues pointedly over Rachel, answering the question in the way Quinn clearly wanted, "because when Puck mentioned to me in class that he was driving you to the doctor's during lunch, he mentioned he had to get you both all the way to Cottage Avenue and back and there's only one lady/baby doctor on this street."

She smiles (it's half genuine) and tells them meaning it as much as she can right now, "Thank you for coming. You didn't have to, but I'm glad you did."

"Is everything okay?" Mercedes asks eagerly.

"Yes," Quinn assures, "she was just kicking an old injury- broken rib- that didn't heal right. So everything's fine." (She's not sure if she's saying it like she believes it. She's not sure if she believes it yet.)

"That's great," Mercedes responds and Rachel and Kurt offer their agreement.

"Yeah, it was a big relief. Thank God her doctor took the time to look through Quinn's medical history and figure out what was going on," May tells them, the fact that things were okay and that Quinn had a good doctor clearly both a load off her mind. "And it was so sweet of you all to come down here," May adds, truly impressed that Quinn (and her son) had found such considerate friends.

"Yes it was," Quinn agrees.

"Well of course we came, we're your friends," Rachel responds like it was a rule that must be upheld- friends showed up in moments of crisis, big or small.

''Well thank you, again," Quinn repeats. "Can you do something else for me though? With everything the last twenty-four hours have been, I forgot to charge my phone at all and it's dead now. Can you let everyone know that both me and the baby are fine?"

"Yeah, no problem," Kurt agrees and pulls out his phone. "Oh," he exclaims, "how about a picture message?" He points his phone at her and directs, "Give me a thumbs up. Don't worry, I'll also put it in writing to everyone."

Quinn doesn't really feel like having her picture taken, but she feels even less like arguing so she does as he asks and gives her second completely fake smile of the last twenty minutes along with a thumbs up and her other hand on her stomach.

Rachel hugs her in the blink of an eye as soon as Kurt's put his phone away. "I'm glad everything's okay," she tells her. "I've got to get home though so I can get ready for my date with Finn tonight," she informs her happily.

"And I've got to get to Friday night family dinner and drive both of them back," Kurt says, hugging her next.

"I've got nothing to do, but they're my ride. Call me if you need anything or if you want to hang out later," Mercedes tells her, hugging her last.

They say goodbye to May as well and as her three friends are heading to Kurt's SUV, Quinn overhears Kurt telling Rachel that whatever outfit she ends up with tonight, she must resist her unfortunate urge to wear leg warmers.

"That was so nice of them," May comments as she gets in the car.

"Yeah," Quinn agrees, but leaves it at that.

May pulls out of the lot and wonders if she should say something else. Personally, she wasn't a fan of lingering silences. But maybe Quinn was, maybe it was something she needed. She hadn't spent enough time with Quinn to know if silence was something she liked of if it was a behavior that should concern her. She had been concerned about the whole Quinn asking her to text Noah for her thing, but then with the explanation she gave to her friends, May's concern lessened. Now though…she doesn't know what to do so she settles on simply driving Quinn back to her house.

Quinn tries to tell herself that she just has to hang on for a few more minutes. In a few more minutes, she'll be home. But it's so _hard_, and the ride feels so _long_. Three minutes into the silent drive, she can't hold back her tears anymore and lets out a soft sob as she finally can't manage to will them away anymore.

May pulls over immediately, puts the car in park, undoes her seatbelt, and leans across the consol, hugging Quinn as best she can when the girl is slouched forward, head in her hands, crying.

For the last twenty or so hours, Quinn has been so immensely more terrified than she has ever been before in her life (despite the fact that in the last few months, her life had left her plenty of things to fear). She got lucky that everything was okay, things didn't have to go that way. Something could have been wrong. She could have lost her. But…by this time next week she'll have visited two adoption agencies and in the end, she's always known that she's going to lose her daughter. Until now though, she hadn't realized how thoroughly _awful_ and _heartbreaking_ it was going to be. And it wouldn't break her heart like Puck did because if she hadn't gotten pregnant she knew she would have still moved on from that in time (though perhaps been a bit more jaded or cautious). This, losing her daughter (because now, the idea of never seeing her feels so close to the fear she's had in these past hours of miscarrying), is going to be a heartbreak she never gets over.

So she can't help crying, because now, she has a much better idea than ever what everything that may likely come will _feel_ like.

(And it's unbearable.)

-o-o-o-

May is not about to let a girl (let alone this particular girl- pregnant with her grandchild) who just cried in her car for fifteen minutes go home and spend the night alone. Instead, after Quinn calms down, with help from May, she tells Quinn that they're going to go pick up Kelyn from her dance practice and then go to dinner and a movie- have a girls night.

They eat at Olive Garden and see _Leap Year _and it all feels so normal and comfortable that Quinn finds herself forgetting for small stretches of time- five minutes, ten minutes- the things that today had made her realize. Maybe that means that after _everything_, her life won't be as consumed by this whole experience as she thinks. Maybe even then, she'll find chunks of minutes where her life won't be that bad.

After the movie's over, Quinn tries to casually ask May to drop her at home, but May won't have that.

"Now why would you want to do that? Noah's home now and you haven't talked to him since before the appointment. Don't you think you should?" May questions.

Quinn bites her lip and doesn't respond. (It didn't have anything to do with him as she knows May suspects, she just didn't want to talk about it, at all.)

May continues as if a response wasn't even necessary, "You know, I'm not letting you stop talking to him again- unless you have a really good reason. But if you ever don't again, I'm not going to sit around and do nothing. Next time- God forbid that there should be one- I'm going over to your house, coming in whether your parents like it or not, and I'm going to drag you out if I have to and force you to talk him. And to me too of course."

So Quinn agrees, May's right, she should talk to Puck and that's how she finds herself walking through his door instead of finally returning to her house.

As soon as they're through the door, May steers Kelyn toward the kitchen saying that they're going to make sundaes, though it's clear that she's trying to give her and Puck a moment alone to talk as she wanted them to.

Quinn figures she might as well get this over with (talking about today) and heads for the living room (which she assumes Puck is in because she can hear the TV).

He mutes the TV as soon as she rounds the corner from the entryway to the living room.

She sits down next to him on the couch trying not to blush because she could feel his eyes trail her as she crossed the room and sat down. She doesn't know where to start, but lucky for her he dives in rather simply.

"Everything's okay?" he asks. He knows what the text from his mom said, and he had been trying to believe it, but he really just needed to hear it.

"Yeah. The doctor said she's fine and there's nothing wrong with me either. She's just kicking a rib that didn't heal right so it's sensitive and hurts when she hits it," Quinn answers evenly, carefully. He's not quick to ask anything else, but she doesn't want him to come up with anything on this particular topic so she figures it's best to tell him the truth. She confesses, "It's been…a hard day. I kind of had a melt down on your mom in her car just after the appointment. So…can we just not talk about any of it for right now?"

He's a little thrown, mostly because she was apparently on the same page as he was. The last twenty-four hours had been…strange. He wasn't sure how to describe how he had been feeling during them or if he wanted to figure out what it all meant, if it meant anything at all, because he wasn't sure any of it made any difference. See, he wasn't even making much sense in his own head anymore. It had been a really long-ass day, he didn't want to have to worry anymore. So he's happy to comply, "Sure. Yeah, it's been a difficult day and it's over so I don't see the point in going over it again now anyway."

She lets out a small sigh and relaxes against the couch cushions relieved, "Good."

There is one thing about today he didn't want to just forget about for now though. Curiously, he asks, "How'd you break your rib in gymnastics though? Did you used to really suck at it?"

Quinn smiles, grateful for the change to a much easier topic and tells Puck the same story she told May in the doctor's office about how she ended up with a broken rib.

"Sounds like the girl deserved worse than a broken nose. I mean, she was plotting for you to get seriously injured, right?" Puck reasons.

"Yeah, I could have ended up pretty badly hurt had she done that, but she didn't-"

"Yet. You don't know that she wouldn't have gone through with it. I've hit guys for way less than that," Puck tells her. Contemplatively, he adds, "In fact, I don't think a broken nose was enough. She plotted to seriously injure you and she gave you a broken rib, which still hurts you. She should get way worse. Do you know what she drives? We could slash her tires."

"You're not slashing anyone's tires," May says, coming into the living room with three sundae's. "Who are you talking about anyway?" she asks as she hands a sundae to her son and one to Quinn.

"The girl that broke Quinn's rib. She was plotting to hurt her and all she got was a broken rib. I think she deserves a little more- at the very least slashed tires," Puck reasons.

"I wanna help," Kelyn chimes in excitedly. She doesn't really know what they're talking about, but if there's going to be slashing of anyone's tires, she wants in.

"No," all three of them respond in unison.

"And you're not doing it either," May tells her son, taking a seat in her recliner.

"Don't worry, he can't," Quinn tells May, "the girl moved after eighth grade. She doesn't even live in Ohio anymore."

"Hmm," Puck says, considering it as he continues to dive into his sundae, "something through the mail then I guess. What could you send through the mail that would suck to get?"

"Fire ants!" Kelyn exclaims.

"Yes!" Puck responds, excited by the idea…until he notices the glares from both Quinn and his mom. Right, he supposes involving his sister in this (or doing it at all) isn't the smartest or best thing to be doing. "Just kidding," he says, backtracking, "I wasn't actually going to do anything. God you guys are easy." (He hopes they can't tell he's lying.)

Quinn only hangs out with them for about twenty more minutes, telling them about how she's exhausted after not having slept last night and she needs to call her sister and fill her in before she can go to bed so she should get going (it was nearly ten after all).

May is worried that Quinn isn't okay, that today had been too hard and she shouldn't be leaving to go home alone, but she does need her rest and talking to her only family member that wants to talk to her is important so she holds her tongue and simply says goodnight.

Naturally Puck offers to be the one to drive Quinn home. His mom insisting on picking her up earlier is the reason she's without her car and given how much longer his day was then his mom's, she should probably be the one taking her back. But that logic didn't cross his mind as he immediately offered to take Quinn home when she mentioned she should return there. (He'd barely seen her today, he just wanted to spend a little bit more time with her.)

Silence fills Puck's truck for the first minute of the drive to her house. He can't seem to think of anything to say that wouldn't be about today and neither can she and it's a topic they both need a break from for now.

Thankfully, her phone beeps with a new text (after they picked Kelyn up, May drove them by Quinn's house so she could get her car charger from her car and bring her phone back to life). She had been getting messages from the kids from glee club saying how they were glad everything was okay ever since her phone was no longer dead. She expected that whatever this new message was, it was another one like that (though she couldn't think of who she hadn't heard from yet), so she was quite surprised when she read it.

A smile instantly graces her face and then her phone beeps again with a new message, and again a few seconds later.

"Finn just texted me," Quinn announces. Part of her couldn't believe it. She knew Puck had said that Finn said he wasn't mad at them anymore, that he had forgiven them, but she hadn't really believed it. It had started to feel hopeless that he would ever be okay with her again and most of the time she was convinced she deserved it if he never forgave her. But now, it appeared he had really forgiven her. She reads the messages to him, "He said, "Hey, do you want to talk tomorrow? Maybe over lunch, my house?" And then he texted again, "This is Finn by the way. I don't know if you have my number in your new phone and that last message could have been kind of creepy if you don't." Then he added, "I'm glad you and Drizzle are okay."

"Drizzle," Puck says with a laugh. "I told you he wanted to talk to you though," he says because he could tell she was surprised.

She texts him back quickly with "Thank you. Lunch tomorrow sounds great. See you then." As she finishes, she responds, "I know. I guess I just didn't really believe it."

"Because you didn't feel like he should forgive you?" Puck asks knowingly. "I've felt that way. Still kind of do even if we're cool now," he offers honestly.

"You shouldn't feel that way. What I did was worse. So much worse," she responds, guilt starting to consume her again.

"I think we both made a lot of bad decisions back then," Puck reasons, "I mean, we've talked about that before, right? A lot to regret about back then."

"Yeah," she agrees quietly. Thinking about their history though, specifically their history in this truck, she adds, "But I don't regret everything."

He groans as he pulls over in front of her house. He puts the truck in park as he tells her, "You can't say stuff like that and not expect me to break your rule about not kissing you."

Smirking, she suggests, "Maybe I want you to break the rule."

"Do you?" he pounces.

She pretends to think it over for a few seconds (that feel like minutes to him) and then decides, "Nope. Not tonight."

"We could blame it on the pregnancy hormones," he suggests hopefully.

To herself, thoughtfully, she comments, "I should probably get out of here and say goodnight before you actually go through with breaking any rule."

Puck honestly has no idea what's going on. So he asks, "Wait. Just tell me, do you want me to kiss you or not?"

Honestly, she wants him to kiss her and she knows it. And given how awful the day had been, she's tempted to give in. But she knows she has her rules for very good reasons and she can't keep flip flopping on him (it isn't nice-though the teasing in this moment was fun). So she tells him, "I don't want the rules to be broken. There were good reasons for them and nothing has changed that." (Note: she doesn't say that she doesn't want him to kiss her, because she doesn't want to lie to him like that.) She offers, "I'll try to refrain from saying anything that tempts you to break them from now on."

"It's cool. You can tempt me all you want. Then, when I can't resist, you wouldn't be able to blame me," he counters with a smirk, happy with his logic.

She laughs and opens the door to get out. "Goodnight," she says, pointedly not commenting on his reasoning (she didn't want to tell him that it didn't sound that bad to her).

" 'Night," he returns as she gets out of the truck. He stays parked there until she's inside her house and he knows it'd be a lie if he said he did that to make sure she got inside safely (he's not even going to get to talk to her until he's out of work tomorrow probably- it feels like a long time to go without her).

-o-o-o-

The first thing Puck does after Quinn's inside and he's driving away, is call Finn. The fact that he loves Quinn came up in their reconciliatory talk and he needs to make it clear to Finn that it can't in his talk with Quinn.

"Hey," Finn answers his phone cheerily, "you have really good timing. I just made plans with Quinn to talk tomorrow."

"I know. I was giving her a ride home when she got your text and it's why I called," Puck explains. He doesn't want to have this conversation, but he'd rather be having it with Finn than anyone else so that's something at least. "You remember how when we talked you brought up how I love her?"

"Yeah," Finn answers.

"You can't do that tomorrow. Don't say anything about that to Quinn," Puck pleads.

Finn has no idea why Puck would ask him to do that so he asks, "Why not?"

"Cause she doesn't know and I don't want her to right now, especially not from someone other than me," Puck explains, though he thought it was pretty obvious.

"You don't think she knows? But…doesn't everybody know?" Finn asks and before he can respond he questions the person next to him, "Rach, you know Puck loves Quinn, right?"

Puck can here Rachel respond, "Of course. He said it when I forced you two to have that meeting. Not to mention he's been fairly obvious."

"See," Finn insists, "I'm pretty sure even my mom knows." Thoughtfully, he adds, "Though I might have told her. Sometimes I stay stuff without really thinking about it."

"Yeah, but you can't do that tomorrow. Okay? I don't care if everyone else knows as long as no one tells her," Puck instructs. Though he did care that everyone else apparently knew. He had never been this guy before, heart-on-his-sleeve-guy, and he had thought he'd never want to be him because that kind of guy sounded like a wuss. But…if he gets the girl, he doesn't think he'll care at all anymore that she turned him into this guy.

"Why haven't you told her though? You told me a long time ago now," Finn asks. He offers, "I told Rachel and…let's just say it's a good thing to say to a girl. I think I have a little bit of frost bite still and I don't even care."

"The timing just hasn't been good. And it's still not," Puck answers and smirks a little because he could hear Rachel smack Finn a little for his comment about "I love you" being a good thing to say to a girl.

"Timing? I thought it was always a good thing to hear so it was always a good thing to say," Finn questions, getting a little confused.

"Things are more complicated for us though, especially now," Puck counters (it's fear talking, fear of a whole lot of things that allow him to have this particular brand of logic, but Finn's words will stay with him).

"Yeah, I guess I get that," Finn says understandingly though honestly he's not sure if he really does understand. Given all of their complications, as he understood them with the baby and everything, didn't that make this a better time to tell her? Or at least make it more important that she knew now, given all of the complications? Puck was, pretty often, smarter than him though so he figures he should probably just accept it and stop bothering thinking about it. So he promises, "I won't say anything though. You don't have to worry."

"Thanks," Puck responds gratefully.

"Oh and are you working Sunday night? Because I'm free and I was thinking that maybe we could hang out," Finn adds hastily, nearly forgetting that he had checked his Rachel-made schedule.

"Yeah, I get off at four. Meet you at my place at 4:30?" Puck says, jumping on the opportunity. It had been far too long since he got to hang out with his best friend.

"Sure," Finn agrees and Puck can hear Rachel trying to tell Finn to tell him to practice for regional's in the background, but instead of doing that he simply says, "Alright, have a good night man. See you Sunday."

"Yeah, you too," Puck returns, snickering as he hangs up at the thought of what Rachel's probably doing to Finn right now since he didn't do what she wanted.

-o-o-o-

Quinn instantly regrets her decision to keep Jessica in the dark about what had been going on today as soon as she calls. Naturally, Jessica is very peeved about the lack of communication for the last day and a half.

"I'm sorry. It wasn't the right thing to do. I know that now. It won't happen again, I promise," Quinn apologizes after Jessica's initial rant about not answering her phone all day.

Jessica sighs heavily and considers her sister's apology for a few minutes. She knows how badly Quinn's been dealing with making mistakes lately though so even though normally she'd torture her a bit (or a lot) more before letting her off the hook (plus she also knows the circumstances even if Quinn hasn't gotten to explain yet), she decides not to this time. So she declares, "It's okay. I forgive you." Impishly, she adds, "Besides, since you weren't talking to me, I decided there was no longer a reason to abide by your wishes and not contact any of your friends. So I looked up Kurt, but found his dad's garage. Burt was so nice. I talked to him for a while- a bit about you, a bit about my car, which he's going to take a look at when we see him at your Regional's. Then he gave me Kurt's number. I can't wait to meet him in person. He was so sassy and fun. And _so _informative."

"You know everything?" Quinn asks, a little bit nervous about what exactly Kurt may have divulged.

"Yep," Jessica confirms, "I know you and Puck made up because he made you confront him by some means involving your guidance counselor. I know that after you made up you were holding hands with him under the table during lunch. I know you thought you were being kicked in the kidneys by the baby during your glee practice and I know that that's not possible right now so you got really worried and saw a doctor today. I know that she was actually kicking that rib you broke when you threw down with that bitchy little girl from your gymnastics class. And I know both of you are fine. Oh and I know you held hands with Puck again today during lunch- on top of the table. He didn't go to the appointment because he was working and you thought all it would be was you getting test results confirming a urinary tract infection. But May went with you. And I know that you have really dark circles under your eyes today- Kurt said your concealer really wasn't working for you, but he didn't want to say anything. Did I miss anything?"

"No," Quinn admits regrettably. It sounded like she had been leaving her sister out of so much when she listed it all like that. She apologizes again, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about any of it. I didn't want to worry you if it was nothing. Especially since I figured there was a good chance that as soon as I told you, you'd probably drop everything and drive all the way here even though being in a car is uncomfortable for you right now. And in order to get here, you'd have to have Eric drop everything too and by the time you got here I could have had answers and you'd be here for a couple of hours and have to drive all the way back. And even if you didn't do all that, I still didn't want to worry you if it was nothing."

"I figured that was your reasoning, but, just so you know for the future, it's wrong. _Always _tell me when something is up," Jessica insists.

"Yes, I know. I promise I will," Quinn repeats. But it's not exactly like she's alone in this behavior so she points out, "And you should do the same. Remember how your leg was broken for _weeks_ and you had had surgery on it even before you told me about it?"

Damn, Jessica exclaims in her head. In her scolding she had completely forgotten about that. "Okay," she drawls, "I guess I've made the same mistake. I won't do it again either."

Jessica has a lot of questions. Kurt knew all of the highlights and had some nice little bits of info to contribute as an outsider, but she wanted to know the stuff only Quinn (and possibly Puck and May) would know. She had had a lot of time to give this some thought though and while she knows she can't relate to what today must have been like for her sister, she can imagine, and she knows now is probably not the right time for questions. So she lets her off the hook for now, "I should probably let you go for tonight though. I know you're exhausted and your day was really crappy so you should get some rest so you can spend tomorrow telling me everything."

"Okay," Quinn agrees, relieved that she didn't have to relive it all telling her sister about it right now. Remembering that she has some very important plans, she adds hastily, "But tomorrow afternoon or evening because before that I'm having lunch with Finn. He wants to talk."

"Shut the front door!" Jessica exclaims, "This is a good thing, right?"

"Yeah, he talked to Puck while I wasn't talking to him and Finn told him that he's fine with everything now. He said he forgave both of us and he was just waiting for an opportunity to talk to each of us outside of school so we wouldn't have the whole school watching. So he texted me tonight and asked if I'd come over for lunch."

"That's great. From what you had said about him, he seemed like a good guy so I knew he'd come around eventually," Jessica tells her. Though honestly she suspected that this wouldn't happen, but she wasn't about to admit that. Someone needed to be optimistic with Quinn's life, remind her that things can still be good.

"Yeah," Quinn agrees. She doesn't want to get her hopes up about tomorrow too much though. She know what it's supposed to be, but she's nervous that it won't be everything she wants to say and everything she wants to hear so (on top of everything from today) she doesn't want to think about it. So she changes the subject and tells Jessica to catch her up on what she's been up to for the last day and a half as she gets ready for bed.

Twenty minutes later she's in bed, but she's far from sleep. She's really, really trying not to think about today and she's especially trying not to cry again (she feels a bit cried out over it all). As she works so hard to think of nothing and just fall asleep, she curls up on her side, wrapping one arm around her stomach. A soft kick reminds her that she's okay, they're both okay, and that's all that really matters. It doesn't take her long to fall into a deep sleep after that.

-o-o-o-

Quinn sits in her car in front of Finn's house on Saturday. The sooner she goes in, the sooner she gets to apologize for everything and get forgiven for it. She knows that, but she's been sitting in her car parked outside his house for almost a minute.

As if the baby can sense her hesitation, she kicks Quinn- quite hard. "Fine, I'll go," she says with a roll of her eyes figuring she got the message the universe/the baby was trying to send her. She gets out of her car and walks to the door hurriedly (it's snowing and freezing) and she knocks quickly when she gets there before she chickens out.

The door opens immediately, reveling a smiling Finn. "Hey," he greets, opening the door wider and stepping back to allow her to come in.

"Hi," she returns, her voice sounding unrecognizable to her own ears. She follows his lead and goes in the house.

He shuts the door behind her and before things have a chance to get awkward, he starts talking again as he heads the very short distance to the kitchen, "I kind of woke up late this morning so I haven't made anything for lunch yet."

"Need a hand?" she offers, hoping doing something will help her relax and feel like herself again.

"Yeah, sure," Finn accepts gratefully. Him and food preparation didn't really mix. He checks out the fridge and cupboards and lists off the things they have and that they could make. After little debate they settle on BLT's and Quinn gets to work frying the bacon while Finn digs the rest of the stuff out.

"Where's your mom today?" she asks, trying to make simple conversation.

"She left a little while ago to head to Dayton with Burt. They're going to a Foreigner concert tonight," Finn answers as he puts bread into the toaster. He pushes the leaver down and realizes what he just said and how it could be confusing to someone who he hasn't talked to in a long time and doesn't know the details of his life. He explains, "Oh, she's dating Kurt's dad, Burt. It started-"

"I know," she cuts him off so he doesn't have to recap everything for her, "Kurt mentioned it."

"Right," he says, he forgot she was pretty good friends with most of the club now.

She doesn't think that it's her place to ask anymore, but she hopes that someday it will be, that they could be that good of friends again. So she asks, "How is that going? For you, I mean. It must be weird to have your mom seriously involved with a guy."

"Yeah, it is," Finn says honestly. He puts two more slices of bread in the toaster and gets to work assembling lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on the already toasted bread. Thoughtfully, as he continues to work, he adds, "I stopped thinking about the possibility of her moving on a long time ago. She never seemed interested. So when she told me about Burt and how they'd like to live together, it really threw me. I think I've gotten used to it now though. I mean, Burt's a cool guy and my mom is happier than I've ever seen her- that made it a lot easier to deal with."

She smiles to herself as she starts taking the bacon out of the pan, glad that he's talking to her just as openly as he ever did. "Have you eaten over at Kurt and Burt's yet?" she asks conversationally.

"Yeah," he answers. She comes up next to him with a plate full of bacon and they both load some on their sandwiches. He smiles over to her, "You know I love my mom, but…Burt's a way, _way _better cook."

"The fresh bread and homemade pasta, it's hard to like anyone's food better than Burt's," Quinn offers because it was clear Finn felt kind of bad for preferring anyone's cooking over his mom's.

"Yeah, it's making me hungrier just thinking about it," Finn admits thinking about how he's probably going to be making himself another sandwich (which Quinn apparently knew about him because she cooked plenty of bacon for him to have another one).

They sit down at his kitchen table and start to eat their sandwiches…which is when things get weird. Silence settles between them and it's decidedly awkward.

Finn knows he should really get to telling her everything he asked her to lunch to tell her in the first place. But talking means not eating anymore and he was hungry, it was hard to give up eating to talk. He quickly gets more than halfway through his sandwich and simply decides to devour the rest so he can say what he wanted to before things get super uncomfortable. When he finishes, he notices that Quinn isn't even half way done with her sandwich. He kind of thought being pregnant would make her eat more like him- quickly and a lot- but he guesses that that's not happening, at least not yet.

Right, he was supposed to be talking. He's got to stop letting his mind stray (which Rachel keeps telling him). "I guess you know why I wanted you to come over," he begins, "I mean, I figured that Puck must have told you about our talk."

"Yeah, he did," Quinn says, putting her sandwich down, preparing herself for what she wanted to say. She rushes on before he can say anything else, "And I've really wanted to talk to you too, but I didn't want to force you into hearing what I've wanted to say. Which is that I'm _so_ sorry. I'm sorry about everything. About agreeing to go out with you when I knew I had feelings for Puck and for sleeping with him while we were together. But most of all I'm sorry for lying and saying the baby was yours. I didn't plan that. I don't even know how it happened. You were the first person to notice anything was wrong with me and I just…I guess all that stuff came out because I was terrified and you were my only real friend and if I told you the truth I thought I'd lose you too and I couldn't. I know that's not an excuse. What I did was wrong and I'm so sorry I hurt you. I never meant to and I've never wanted to and I regret it more than anything."

"I know," Finn says understandingly, "I was mad for a while so it took me a bit to remember, but I know you're a good person and I know you cared about me like I cared about you. So I know both you and Puck didn't mean for me to get hurt and I get that now and I'm cool with it. And both of you."

"Thank you. You have no idea how relieved I am that you're that nice that you'd forgive me. You were the first real friend I've had since the second grade and I thought I screwed up so bad that I had lost you for good," Quinn tells him, relieved and so happy that they'd be okay that she's starting to tear up (and she had done so good making it through everything she wanted to say without crying- damn).

"You were a really good friend to me too. I don't want to lose that," Finn offers sincerely. He chuckles a little and reasons, "You'd think, with both of us thinking of each other as a friend, we would have realized we weren't meant to be more than friends."

"Yeah," she agrees. His mention of their status as more than friends reminds her that she left something out earlier, "And around the end of our relationship, I was a real bitch to you. I'm so sorry. I don't even know where that came from. I just kept biting your head off for everything and you didn't deserve it at all."

Sheepishly, he admits, "Well, I kind of think I did. I mean, as far as I knew, you were having my kid and you had to force me into stepping up and even then I didn't really do it. Not like Puck has. I just…couldn't seem to wrap my head around all of it and what I should have been doing." He had been pretty ashamed about his behavior when he found out she was pregnant. Sure he had been a shoulder for her to cry on and had readily offered her home to her, but that was after he got her kicked out because he hadn't really talked to her about everything enough and he only got a job with Rachel's help and after Quinn's constant prodding. Even if it wasn't his kid, he had thought it was and he felt like he really failed both of them then (which is why he so needs to never actually end up in that situation- he's as far from ready for it as can be). Even more reluctantly, he adds, "Plus…I kind of kissed Rachel while we were together. Twice. And the second time, it was after I knew you were pregnant. So, even though you didn't know about it, you had a pretty good reason not to be happy with me."

"I _slept_ with someone else," she says with a gesture to her stomach, "I think what I did was still way worse and I should have been better to you."

"Okay, I'm not going to agree with that and this isn't a contest so I propose we stop talking about it. Stop worrying about stuff we wish we had done differently," Finn suggests.

She smiles and accepts, "Okay." She doesn't feel like she should be let off the hook so easily, but that was kind of who Finn was so she knows better than to argue.

"Now…" he begins, trying to think of the things he had wanted to talk to her about, "I've been kind of kept in the loop on stuff thanks to Rachel and the rest of the glee club, but catch me up. What's been going on with you? Like…how's your sister doing? Is she in a walking cast yet?"

Quinn kind of suspected that the club's penchant for gossip and Rachel's seeming inability not to talk would mean Finn knew everything going on with her this whole time they hadn't been speaking (even if there had been times when he probably didn't want to know anything), but it's still a delightful surprise that he's so well informed that he knows what's going on with her sister.

They talk for a while about her life and about his, about glee club and the new friends they've gained. Somewhere during all of it Finn has another sandwich and tries to insist that Quinn should have another as well- she's eating for two, shouldn't that equal two sandwiches?

After a while, once they've moved their catching up to the couch, the conversation lulls just a tiny bit and Finn interjects, "I've missed this."

"Me too," Quinn agrees with a soft smile.

They had covered a lot of topics. After all, Quinn had been there nearly three hours now, but it had mostly been lighter and easier topics (except when they talked about her parents and her current situation with them). There are still some things Finn wants to know though. He's not sure it's his place to ask anymore or that it won't make what had been a pretty nice afternoon turn awkward and uncomfortable. But he doesn't want things to be like that so he decides it's time to finally dive in and see what happens. He asks, truly confused as he thought back, "Can I ask you though…one thing I've never got is why didn't you tell Puck about the baby before you had told me that other stuff? We haven't gotten to talk a ton, but he mentioned that you guys were planning on telling me what was going on between you two after you slept together, but you imploded too quick afterwards to even get to that. But you had to know he'd still be there for you, right? Didn't you still think he was a good enough guy to do the right thing? Because he would have. I know he would have."

"Yeah, I…" she trails off. She hadn't really given it that much thought. There had been more important things going on back then, much bigger mistakes to deal with. She recalls, "Honestly, when I blurted out that lie to you, I hadn't even thought about his part in everything. Not really. I mean, I knew he was the father and I knew that meant I'd have to tell him I'm pregnant, but…I was still too shocked and scared and I had thought I had a while before anyone noticed so I had plenty of time to talk to him. But then you noticed something was wrong with me and that stupid lie came spilling out and dealing with that became a new priority and telling him got more complicated."

Quinn really liked how, despite their recent stretch of time spent not being friends at all, Finn still believed in his former/renewed best friend enough that he didn't hesitate to express how much he believed in him. So she offers, "And he did do the right thing. Unfortunately it was after he heard I was pregnant from you and not from me so the right thing came along with a good amount of anger- on both of our parts- but he still tried to do the right thing."

Finn smiles. He really wants to find out if she's in love with Puck too. He thinks she is, just like everyone else in glee club had assumed, but he was hoping for an admission like Puck's while they talked and so far there had been absolutely nothing. This, Quinn clearly knowing that Puck is a good guy, might be what he'll have to settle for. He knows he can't just come out and ask her if she loves him point blank. How weird would that be? So he's left to resort to the only thing he's been able to come up with- approaching the topic of the future. "Yeah, and it seems like he's been doing really, really good lately about doing the right thing and everything. I mean, he has that job and he shaved off his Mohawk- which I still can't believe, kind of thought he'd have that forever. But…I know he's working and I know you said you got some money for your car and you worked a little too… but the other day at lunch it seemed like you guys are still leaning toward adoption?"

Quinn had been hoping today would be a distraction from thinking about the future. So far, it had been. She doesn't want to get into all of her concerns and worries (and how yesterday made her _feel_ different about them) so she tries to stick to logic as she explains, "Well, yes, Puck has a job, but he'll only be able to work after school and on weekends and that's what? Twenty, twenty-five hours a week? That alone, isn't enough to support a baby on. May already has enough people depending on her income and I can't add any more. And I have about twenty thousand saved, but I also don't have a job and I haven't heard anything from any place I've applied to. The economy is awful so it seems entirely likely that I may not get a job at all for a long time and what if that happens? With rent and utilities and everything you need for a baby and other necessities, how long could twenty thousand and Puck's earnings last? I don't have to worry about any of it going to medical bills because I got on MedicAid, but still…it won't last forever. Maybe just a year, and then what? It'd be a huge gamble to try something like that so I think we need to do the responsible thing and consider that adoption really might be the best thing for her. Two parents who are ready to be parents and can offer security and stability."

Wow, he had kind of forgotten how depressing thinking about all this stuff was. Maybe it wasn't the right way to get her to talk about Puck and his possible involvement in her future at all. Sympathetically, he offers, "Yeah. When I thought I was the one in this with you, I was against the whole adoption thing at first and I'm sorry for giving you a hard time about it. I've thought about it a lot since then and I get it now. It is the responsible thing to do- to make sure you really consider your options. But…you have to do not only what's right for her, but what's right for you and what's right for Puck too. It effects all of you hugely, not just her."

She wants to argue with him. He's not wrong. What happens will affect her and Puck (as of yesterday, she learned that it will impact her so much more than she anticipated). But it feels selfish to take that into consideration and she's been selfish enough in her life, she knows that this is not the place for it. She can't get the words out though, because she knows that if she does then he'll just spend more time trying to convince her and she's already made her mind up.

He continues on, persisting finally toward his ultimate point, "I know you though. I know you'll put her first. Definitely before yourself. But…I've known Puck a long time. Pretty much as long as I can remember. He literally is my brother from another mother. And as strong as he is and as much stuff he's survived, I don't think he'd survive losing her or you and I know he wouldn't survive if he lost both of you." For the record, he at no time said Puck was in love with Quinn. He kept his word and didn't let that slip. (He just kind of implied she was his world- that's totally not the same.) "Just-keep that in mind, alright?" he adds, letting her off the hook for having to respond to anything he just said. He had _really_ wanted to hear her response, but as he was saying it she looked so conflicted and lost that he just couldn't go through with it anymore, even if he still really wanted to know how she felt about his best friend.

"Okay," she agrees, knowing she's telling the truth because it would be hard not to remember what Finn just said. Thoughts like those about Puck and how he really felt about the situation had definitely crossed her mind. But she had always tried to talk herself out of those thoughts, tell herself she's seeing things wrong, reaching the wrong conclusions because it's easier that way. If Finn, who hadn't even talked to Puck in about two months, could see it though…she still wants to ignore it because the ultimate decision will be easier that way (and maybe it's the only way she can make the right choice), but it's harder now. She knows it's going to be with those words stuck in her head.

Finn didn't get to do what he wanted, but by the way Quinn seems completely wrapped up in her own thoughts, he's going to call this a win because he's pretty sure he just did something good. He smiles again and decides this is probably as good of a time as any to do something his girlfriend requested. He asks, "And something else to keep in mind…Rachel really wants to go on a double date with you guys."

Brow furrowed, mouth hanging open slightly, it takes Quinn a few beats to catch up. "Seriously?" she finds herself asking. Because Finn was her ex and even if her and Rachel were well on their way to developing a good friendship, what girl ever wanted to double date with her boyfriend's ex? Not to mention Rachel knows that she and Puck aren't together so "dating" wasn't something they did.

"Yeah," Finn confirms, "she really wants that to happen. Ever since we got together and I told her how I wanted to talk to both you and Puck and let you know that I'm okay with everything now, she's been insisting that I try to get you guys to go out with us. I forgot to bring it up with Puck, which she's been kind of mad about so I had to tell you."

"But Puck and I…we're not…" she trails off struggling for the right word.

Well, this was different. When they were together, Quinn was always so direct and in control and now she seemed flustered. It was kind of amusing actually, seeing Quinn flustered over talking about her "non-relationship" with Puck. But Finn also kind of felt bad about the fact that he had flustered her so he lets her off the hook continuing, "I know. And Rachel knows you guys aren't together too. But she still wants this date thing to happen anyway. I think she's using "date" kind of loosely. Mostly, I think she just wants all of us to hang out. Things are different than they were before, for all of us, and I think she wants to find a new way for us to be friends."

"I want that too," Quinn agrees. She wants all of them to be able to be friends and she knows it's going to be very different from before due to everything that had happened. But, even if "date" is just Rachel's poor word choice, she's not sure she can handle that right now.

She hasn't said "but", but Finn's pretty sure she has one even if she's not going to say it. He offers, "You can try to talk her out of it. I have been just because I think it'd be weird if just the four of us made plans to do something and we didn't include the rest of the glee club at all. It kind of seems like we'd be excluding them. Unless Rachel and I double dated with Artie and Tina too or went to the movies with Kurt or Mercedes or something too. And Rach kind of agreed that maybe it would seem like we were leaving people out if we only make plans to do something with you guys, but she hasn't mentioned doing anything else with anyone else and still hasn't given up on her original idea. So…yeah, you should try to talk to her about it. I've gotten no where."

She's not sure if he's being nice and giving her an out or if this whole part of their conversation was actually all about him. She knows him pretty well though and figures the former is more likely, but the latter is what she should respond to. She smiles (gratefully) and checks, "So what you've been getting at this whole time is that you want me to talk to your girlfriend for you?"

"Yes. Sort of. It'd be for both of us," Finn answers expectedly. He had to warn her about what Rachel wanted (Rachel would be super pissed at him if he didn't bring it up anyway), but even if he did want to find a way to hang out with his girlfriend and his best friend and the girl his best friend loves (there has to be a better title for her, but all the others seem longer and more complicated) he didn't want Quinn to have to deal with talking to him about it. It was clear she wasn't ready for this kind of topic. Or maybe she just didn't have time for it with everything else, which he could understand. So he gave her a way to avoid it and he's glad that they still know each other well enough that she recognized what he was doing.

"Well," she drawls, pretending to consider it, "I suppose I could help you out. Is there anything else you'd like me to talk to her about?"

"Seriously?" he asks surprised. He figured the topic would just be dropped after she agreed.

"Yeah. After everything I put you through, I owe you," she offers. He opens his mouth and she knows he's probably going to go back to telling her all the ways he screwed up and try to convince her she didn't owe him anything, but she doesn't want to hear it. "No. I owe you. I do. Okay?" she insists.

He doesn't agree…but then again he never really won arguments with Quinn and he's probably not going to start winning now so there's no point in trying. "Okay," he agrees reluctantly. Although, thinking about the offer, this could actually really help him out.

"So what else do you want me to talk to her about?" she asks knowingly.

He's not sure if it's the right thing to do. To take advantage of her offer when he doesn't think she owes him, but it's too good of an offer to pass up. "Okay, well, you know how Rachel had that idea for all of us watching musicals at her house to 'help educate us' or whatever and how it got pushed back until after Regional's? Well, she wants to schedule it for the day after Regional's and I think it's a really bad idea. I mean, we'll need a break and Regional's on Saturday will be a long day and no one's going to want to spend all day Sunday doing that and then she'll get hurt by no one showing up and it'll just be bad. But she's not listening to me about it."

"I'll try to get her to bring that up to me and talk her out of it. I agree, no one's going to want to do that," Quinn concurs. "What else?" she asks.

"My birthday is coming up next month, maybe you could go shopping with her, make sure whatever she gets me doesn't involve kittens, puppies, bunnies…unicorns," he says, trying to come up with other creatures he's seen adorning her room. Straining to remember anything else, he advises, "Just…use your judgment on whatever she's thinking of getting. As much as I love her, Rachel is really horrible at getting people gifts."

"No problem. I'll invite myself along so we can both shop for you and I'll help her control her natural impulses when trying to select a gift," Quinn agrees.

"You don't have to do that. I mean, you shouldn't be buying me anything. I know your money has much more important places to go," he tells her because it's the right thing to do.

"Getting you a gift wouldn't really be a loss though because wouldn't you be getting me one about a month later for my birthday?" she asks, feigning hurt over the idea that he forgot about that.

"Right. I guess it'll work out then. If I get you a gift of equal value," he figures. Although, thinking about having to buy her a gift only about two and a half months from now, a sense of panic starts to fill him. He begins, "Do you think maybe-"

"I'll give you some suggestions of what to get me," she cuts him off knowing the direction he was heading. He really wasn't so great at gift giving either and she knows he knows that.

He smiles gratefully at his ex-girlfriend, which reminds him, "And Rachel's birthday is in June. Do you think-"

"I'll go shopping with you," she says smiling, cutting him off again and showing just how well she knows him. (She doesn't know when Rachel's birthday is in June, but her due date is June 5th and there's a good chance she won't actually be able to keep this promise. Especially if she keeps the baby and _especially_ if she doesn't. But she doesn't want to tell him that now. They were having such a nice conversation.)

"Thank you," he says gratefully. He was already starting to freak out about what to get Rachel and her birthday was nearly six months away. He had zero ideas that he considered even possibly good.

"Anytime," she promises, so glad that she can make promises about the future of their friendship. As nice as this afternoon had been though, Quinn finally glances at the clock and realizes that the evening is quickly approaching now. "I should go though. You probably have a date with Rachel you should be getting ready for," Quinn says as she gets up from the couch.

"Yeah. I probably should start getting ready. She hates it when I'm late," Finn says getting up as well.

Quinn gets her purse and her coat, putting it on as she heads toward his front door.

He's waiting there for her, but he doesn't open the door. He knows this may be kind of weird, but he makes himself spit it out anyway, "Would it be weird if I…hugged you goodbye?"

"Maybe," she responds honestly. She smiles and continues, "But we should probably give it a try anyway." It very well may be uncomfortable, but she really wants to try and get back to a place where it's not so she figures they might as well dive in.

He smiles, grateful that she gets what he was asking and she's game for it. He wraps his arms around her as she does the same and they embrace. She sighs a little at the familiarity and comfort and he releases the small breath he had been holding, relived that this isn't nearly as awkward as it could be. But just to make sure it doesn't get awkward, he releases her after only a couple of seconds.

"This is probably going to sound kind of weird too," he prefaces, "but I'm really glad things turned out like they did."

It is a strange thing to say considering she's pregnant from when she cheated on him with his best friend and she lied to him about that for what felt like a very long time. But she understands what he's really saying and agrees. "Me too," she offers sincerely. Because what he was really saying, she knows, is that he's glad that despite being in a romantic relationship they really had no business being in, in the first place, they can hang out and they'll be really good friends in time.

She tells him to have fun on his date and he bids her good night before she heads out into the snow to her car. She can't stop smiling the whole drive home. The guilt that settled in her chest forever ago finally starting to lessen.

-o-o-o-

Quinn spends most of the rest of her Saturday on the phone. First with Jessica going over everything that had happened in the last few days as her sister requested (and despite the fact that Jess already knew it all). By some miracle Jessica never asked her to about how the whole experience felt, for which she was extremely grateful because that was a conversation she wasn't at all ready to have.

The second long phone conversation she has is with Puck, telling him all about how things went with Finn. She debates whether or not she should mention Rachel's double date suggestion, but then it accidentally slips out. His response is, "A whole night with Rachel and hardly anyone else for her to talk to instead of me or you? That doesn't sound like fun. Especially before competition. She'll never stop 'critiquing' us." She doesn't know what she should take that to mean, but she thinks he might actually be willing to do it. Since she isn't sure she is though, she dives in to all the things Finn asked for help with instead.

Later, after all conversations are over, the baby kicks her in the ribs- hard. "Ow!" she exclaims. The baby does it again and she finds herself talking without thinking about it. "Please don't kick me there again. I'll get you a pony if you don't do it. I promise," she finds herself bargaining to her daughter. The baby promptly kicks again and Quinn lets out angrily, "Fine. I guess you have the same opinion of horses as I do. How about a car if you just stop kicking me in my ribs?" she offers. Unfortunately she starts to ramble logically off of that thought, "Not that I could probably ever afford something very nice considering my parents cut me off. It'd probably have to be something like an old hatchback Civic or- Ow! Fine. Not a car apparently." She would love a car, but apparently it wasn't the right bargaining chip (probably because she was talking to a baby that was twenty weeks old and not even born yet and completely incapable of understanding her). But maybe the problem was that she took after her father. What kinds of things did Puck really like? She grimaces slightly as she offers, just after yet another kick to her ribs, "How about nunchakus? If you don't kick me there again, I'll get you nunchakus." There is no immediate kick. The seconds turn into minutes and still there isn't another kick. Which is how Quinn ends up dissolving into laughter all alone in her bedroom. Because of course, nunchakus would be the offer that happens to work even if talking to the baby to bargain was ridiculous to begin with.

After the laughter dies, with her hand on her stomach, Quinn finally remembers that she promised herself she wouldn't talk to the baby, in an effort not to get more attached. She makes that promise to herself again. That she won't do something this pointless no matter how hard the baby's kicking. (But she doesn't remove her hand from her stomach. She falls asleep with it there and wakes up with it still there hours later.)

-o-o-o-

Sunday brings Finn to the Puckerman apartment for the first time in a little over two months. With the whole thinking he was going to be a father thing, doing things with his best friend had fallen by the wayside a while before he found out the truth.

It's more than a little awkward when he gets there. Mostly because Kelyn and May haven't said hello to him but they have been spying on him and Puck as they moved from the front door to the couch in the living room.

Puck knows the source of the awkwardness as well and as he hands Finn one of the video game controllers he calls, "Ma', Kel, get in here."

As the come into the living room from their hiding spots in the kitchen, Puck asks, "What are you doing?"

"I don't know what you mean Noah," May says very unconvincingly. She smiles at Finn and walks over to him and gives him a hug as she greets, "Finn. It's such a nice surprise to see you here." She pulls away and gives a pointed look to her son (he never mentioned that things were fine between him and his best friend again).

(At the look, Puck realizes what he left out. Whoops.

But in his defense he was more then a little preoccupied with the girl having his kid suddenly not talking to him so…his mom should be cool about the oversight, right?)

"How have you been honey?" May asks him.

"Good," he replies truthfully. Though, seeing the other person who came into the room and hasn't said anything to him, he adds, "Though I would be better if I could get a hug from my favorite ten year old."

"If you really wanted a hug from me you wouldn't have not been around forever," Kelyn retorts (like a smart-ass, not bitterly).

"I told you Kel, that was my fault," Puck interjects.

"And it wasn't my fault," she responds to Puck and continues to Finn, "And if I'm your favorite ten year old and you're my friend too, then why should you drop out of my life just because the two of you aren't talking?"

Damn. Sometimes it was kind of inconvenient that Puck's sister had his personality, but was smarter than him. "Uh…" Finn stalls, "Because I'm an idiot, you're a mini genius, and that didn't occur to me."

She rolls her eyes, but smiles and walks over to him. Before she hugs him she responds, "Fine. Apology accepted."

"Okay, we're going to the movies. We'll be back with dinner," May announces and Puck catches the look of surprise across Kelyn's face (his mom was obviously improvising here- wanting to give them time alone- it was nice). "Finn you're going to join us for dinner, right?" May checks and hopes it sounds like she's insisting, because before he would have stayed and she wouldn't have had to ask so she wants it to still sound like that's the case.

"Absolutely," Finn agrees. Remembering, he adds, "Oh, but can my mom come too? She should just be getting back from Dayton with Burt about now and I don't think she's gonna want to cook."

"Of course she can. I'll call her on our way to the theater," May says. She heads for the door, ushering Kelyn with her, and calls, "Stay out of trouble," as she leaves- just like old times (though it's probably not necessary now).

For the next two hours, Puck and Finn do nothing but play video games and talk football, basketball, and movies. But those topics can't last forever and even though he thought maybe he shouldn't bring up the topic of Quinn (a.k.a. the girl he screwed over his best friend for), Puck can't let this one thing go unsaid though and since his mom could possibly be returning at any minute now, he knows he's running out of the opportunity to say it. As they continue to fight each other on the screen, he says, "Hey, thanks for not saying anything yesterday to Quinn…about, you know, what I asked you not to say anything about."

"Yeah, of course," Finn says with a smile. He doesn't see how Quinn could possibly not know, but whatever. If Puck knew he didn't say anything though, then that could only mean one thing. "So I guess Quinn told you about yesterday then?" he asks and after getting a nod in response from Puck he continues, "So you know what I asked her for help with?"

"Yep," Puck confirms after a beat, trying to recall what Quinn had said.

"Alright. I know I can trust that you won't say anything about that to Rachel, right? I mean, I know she likes Quinn now, but I don't think she'd like me getting help from anyone when I try to buy her a birthday present," Finn explains.

"Yeah, of course," Puck echoes, letting his friend know that he won't say anything. Though, now that he thinks about it, Finn asking Quinn for help with Rachel's birthday present was bugging him for a couple of reasons. He points out, "But you know that, first, I could have totally helped you out there. I'm actually pretty good at buying girls gifts. And second, you do know you'll need to get her something before then, right? Valentines Day is like a month away."

"Crap! I completely forgot about Valentines," Finn exclaims. Rachel's probably going to want something extravagant and really romantic. He honestly has no idea what he could do. Maybe he should call for reservations at the nicest, most romantic restaurant in Lima and save his money to afford it. Or would Rachel think that's too unoriginal? Damnit, he was totally screwed.

When he finally stops panicking internally, Finn remembers the first part of what Puck said and asks, "And since when are you good at getting girls gifts?"

"Since forever," Puck scoffs, "Kel's always liked my gifts best. My mom too."

"Yeah but moms and kids are different than girls our age. Girls our age are…_difficult_," Finn counters.

Puck shrugs, lets it slip quietly, "Hasn't been that hard with Quinn."

Finn smirks, "That's right. I heard about your Christmas adventure. It was a really smart move man. Driving her all the way there so she wouldn't have to miss out on Christmas with her sister."

Puck simply shrugs, brushing it off modestly, like it wasn't the grand gesture it was.

"I heard about your Hanukah presents too- through Rachel. But I never heard what she got you for Christmas and I know Quinn would definitely get you something considering what you did for her. So what'd you get?" Finn asks. He had asked Rachel, but despite the fact that Rachel liked to keep very well informed of inner-club gossip, she had no idea.

"Uh," Puck stalls slightly. He hadn't told anyone. He didn't know why, but he just hadn't. "She gave me a 1968 NFL playoff ticket- Cleveland versus Dallas. She swiped it from her dad's collection telling me I could either keep it just to have something of that jerk's or I could probably sell it for a lot."

"Awesome," Finn comments.

"Yeah…I sold it on ebay for $750 last week," Puck admits. He hadn't even told Quinn about that yet. It turned out it was worth a little more than she thought.

"Wow! That's so cool," Finn says. He smirks and asks, "So are you going to use some of that money to get Quinn something for Valentines Day?"

"No," Puck denies quickly, "I told you, it's not like that between us right now."

"But why not?" Finn's quick to ask because he really didn't understand.

"Because she doesn't want it to be. She called a time out on us a long time ago and she had pretty good reasons for it too. They were probably even better than I know- she is smarter than me after all," Puck explains, a hint of tiredness to his voice. He understood the logic behind her decision, but he'd be lying if he said that it wasn't getting harder and harder for their label to be nothing.

Finn wants to ask what Quinn's reason were because he still really doesn't understand why they aren't together. They both did something he didn't think they were capable of when they got together behind his back, so he knew that they both had to mean a whole lot to each other, which is why he really didn't get why they weren't together. With all that they had already done to be together, with hurting him and everything, what could possibly be standing in their way now? But if Rachel had insisted on keeping him in the friend's zone, he's sure it would be kind of a sore spot so he refrains from asking more (for now), and simply responds empathetically, "That sucks."

"Yep," Puck agrees with a heavy sigh.

A couple of beats of silence pass and they continue to play their game.

Finn's brows furrowed in thought, he eventually asks what's occurred to him, "Don't you have to get her something or do something for her for Valentines anyway though? Even if you aren't together? Because…she is having your kid and a lot of stuff isn't really great for her right now so…"

Puck honestly hadn't thought of it that way. Quinn really freaked out at the first time they were clearly not paying attention to her "no romance" rule so he figured it was safe to avoid the holiday all together. She'd probably freak out if he got her anything, worrying over the implications, and ultimately appreciate it if he didn't even acknowledge it. But Finn has a point. She is having his kid and being pregnant, especially at school, hasn't exactly been doing her life any favors. "Do you think I have to do something? Because she's extremely serious about this whole no romance thing so…I don't see how I could do something on Valentines or get her something for it without going against that rule."

Finn shrugs and suggests, "Do something platonic?"

"How do you do something platonic on Valentines Day?" Puck returns, truly not understanding how that was possible.

It takes him a minute, but Finn finally comes up with an answer, "Do something the day before. Or the day after. And make it something friends would do. Like play video games."

Puck considers it, but there's a problem with it, "Then how is it different than every other day?"

So apparently they did stuff together very regularly. Or at least that's what Finn was getting from Puck's response. And it made sense too. They seemed really close lately and neither one of them had him to hang out with and they had that whole baby thing happening so of course they hung out. "I don't know," Finn responds honestly, "I don't know like, what you guys usually do. I don't know Quinn as well as you do. And you're the one who's claiming to be good at getting girl's gifts so…I don't know what you could do, but I think you'll probably come up with something great." Realizing what he just said, he adds worriedly, "Not too great though, alright? Cause I'm probably not coming up with something very good for Rachel so don't make me look bad in comparison."

"Yeah, sure," Puck agrees to try not to do anything that could earn his friend disappointment from his girlfriend. But he's not too sure about everything else Finn said. He seriously has no idea what he could do or what he could get Quinn that would be completely platonic. Maybe he'll just have to keep his fingers crossed that she'll mention something or she'll do something that will inspire an idea in the next month.

They continue playing for a few minutes when, out of nowhere, Finn exclaims, "Take her sledding!"

"What?"

"Take Quinn sledding. As your platonic Valentines gift."

"She can't go sledding. She's pregnant."

"So?"

"So? It's kind of dangerous."

"No it's not."

"Yeah, it is."

"No it's not," Finn returns again as the door opens and May, Kelyn, and his mom come flooding in. Carol makes right for Finn to say hello since she hadn't seen him since Saturday morning. After she greets both boys, Finn consults his mom, "Mom, sledding isn't too dangerous for a pregnant girl, right?"

Carol takes a second to catch up to the question her son just asked (it was such an odd and unexpected one), but answers thoughtfully, "It's probably technically not too dangerous, but it wouldn't be advisable for a pregnant girl to do anything like that where there's some risk or uncertainties involved." She can't help but ask, concerned, "Is Quinn thinking of going sledding?"

"No, that was kind of my idea," Finn admits. He was right, sledding isn't that dangerous, but he supposes he could see now why it wouldn't be ideal considering Quinn's pregnant. He hasn't talked to his mom in over a day though, he remembers, and asks, "How was the concert?"

"Great," Carol replies, heading to the kitchen with both boys in tow.

"Foreigner, right?" Puck asks, pretty sure that that was what Finn had said.

"Yep. And they're still awesome," she says as she takes a seat at the table that May is still unloading cartons of Chinese food on to. "But," she adds, "concerts are definitely a different experience at my age. The last time I went to one was before Finn was born and even though the crowd was largely my age, it was still just…different."

"I can imagine," May agrees, "I haven't been to a concert since before Noah was born, but the idea of going to one now….it seems exhausting and a little bit painful. Sometimes temple seems a little too loud for my old ears. A concert? I think I'd need ear plugs."

A minute passes in silence, both boys and Kelyn shoveling in food. Carol and May exchange a glance and realize that what should have happened next is apparently not going to. So May points out, "You know that was the point where you were supposed to say we're not old?"

While Finn looks slightly guilty for not picking up on that, Kelyn ignores it completely (she was the youngest, it wasn't her job to get things), Puck responds seriously, "I thought you said you don't like it when I lie?"

"Ah," May scoffs at her son.

"Kidding!" he quickly amends, holding his hands up in defense while everyone laughs at the exchange.

They used to have meals like this together, the Puckerman's and Hudson's, all the time and though tonight is the first time they've all been together like this in months, it's as if nothing has changed.

(Except, Finn finally notices after he's finished eating, there are sonogram pictures hanging on the fridge. The baby's bigger, looks more like a baby that it did in the dvd he used to have.

Even though he realized he wasn't angry any more, that he was over it, he still thought it'd be harder to be around each of them. He thought it'd especially be weird to see anything concerning them and the baby that he used to think was his. But it truly isn't. When he sees the pictures on the fridge it makes him smile. He's glad Puck is handling everything so well. He always knew his best friend would be good at the family thing, even if he had always claimed he wanted to be a bachelor for life. And he's glad Quinn has someone in her life that would hang the pictures on the fridge because he thinks she needs that kind of simple familial support.)

-o-o-o-

The week passes without much incident.

Finn joins Puck walking to his fourth period class on Monday and whispers fill the halls. Finn thought knowing people were talking about him again (especially in relation to the topic that now surrounds his relationship with Puck and Quinn) would really bug him, but he has his best friend back now and he finds that the less than hushed words and critical glances don't really bug him. Especially when Puck admits that he really misses being able to punch people for saying anything about him at all. It makes Finn roar with laughter and completely forget about all the people who will now be gossiping about him again.

Finn also makes it a point to try to walk somewhere with Quinn. Just so it's clear he's cool with both of them, not just Puck. But he ends up only joining her from the walk from her locker to the choir room for glee practice Tuesday and the halls are so crowded with students trying to make a quick escape at the end of the day that it doesn't seem like anyone noticed. Oh well, he supposes he'll keep trying.

The only thing that happens the whole week that truly distinguishes it from any other monotonous high school filled week is the whole glee club finds themselves gossiping about Mr. Schue. Or, more accurately, Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury.

It starts on Tuesday when Rachel mentions at lunch that she was at school late the previous day for her debate club meeting and she saw Ms. Pillsbury get picked up in a really nice car by a man that was definitely not Mr. Schue. This starts a long discussion. Some of the club thought Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury were together, while the rest of them assumed that they were simply on their way to getting together (after his divorce was finalized).

It's while Kurt is asking Rachel if the man could have possibly been family that Santana comes up to the table with Brittany, hears what they're talking about, and drops a bombshell on them. "Are you talking Ms. P's boyfriend?"

"Boyfriend?" is the sharp reply from most of them.

"Yeah. If you're talking about the guy with the red Corvette then you saw her with her boyfriend," she answers.

"How do you know he's her boyfriend?" Rachel's quick to question.

"Because I met him," Santana answers Rachel as if it was the stupidest question ever. She explains, "She dragged me into her office last week to talk to me about…my grades, I think, and he came in and dropped off lunch he made for her. She said he was her boyfriend, Doctor….something. I don't know I wasn't listening to her. He's literally the hottest guy I've ever met. I seriously considered punching her out and telling him he could have me on her desk any way he wanted me."

"How classy of you," Kurt intones sarcastically.

"Please," Santana responds rolling her eyes at Kurt, "If you saw him and he was as gay as you, you would've done the same thing."

Uncomfortably, Rachel admits, "From the short glimpse I saw of him, he did seem to be very attractive." (She's more uncomfortable about agreeing with Santana than she is about the fact that Finn is sitting next to her as she talks about another man's attractiveness.)

"What?" Finn questions.

Rachel rolls her eyes at his jealousy and simply takes his hand in hers to let him know her opinion was just that, an opinion.

"But…what about Mr. Schue?" Mercedes asks what they're all thinking.

"Maybe she's just trying to make him jealous for some reason. Why else would you date a hot guy?" Brittany suggests (pointedly toward her cheer companion).

"I don't think that's it. He's seemed depressed lately. I think they're just…over. If they even really ever got started in the first place," Quinn says. She had never noticed Ms. Pillsbury wear the necklace she had realized as they were talking and Mr. Schue hadn't seemed completely like himself since they returned from break. So something going wrong between them seemed like the logical answer.

"That's so sad," Tina comments sympathetically.

A depressing cloud settles over the table.

Santana, not wanting to be a part of that, swipes a cookie from Mike's plate as she rolls her eyes and says, "Whatever. See you losers later." Brittany follows her.

Later, at glee practice, Mr. Schue announces he's had an epiphany about what they should do for Regional's. Everyone knows that his Journey idea isn't a great one (it's not a horrible one either, but definitely not great), but not even Santana has the heart to say anything like that to him given what they've learned of his personal life. So they get started learning their Journey songs and hope that being nice about it is something they won't regret.

-o-o-o-

The rest of the week passes quickly and before Quinn knows it it's Friday afternoon and she's one class period plus a half hour away from visiting her first adoption agency.

Puck has asked her a dozen times already today if she was still sure she wanted to go alone and she's maintained that she does even though she's practically shaking she's so nervous.

She's also been feeling very self-conscious all day. She put on her second nicest sweater dress (the nicest one saved for tomorrow's agencies) and her Coach boots and took extra time with her make-up and hair this morning. The agencies will be trying to get her to pick them, not the other way around. So she knows there's not logical reason to feel like she has to look right and say the right things when she's there, but she feels that way all the same.

Puck meets her at her locker after school and carries her mostly empty bag out to her car for her. He hugs her in the parking lot and tells her to call if she needs him for anything.

When she gets to the first agency, right on time for her appointment, she tries to walk in with confidence, her head held high. She fails.

Before she even reaches the reception desk, a woman standing by the woman sitting at the desk greets her and asks if she's Quinn. She says yes and the woman introduces her self- she's the head of the agency and the person she'll be talking to today. Quinn only nods in response and then only nods again when the woman says to follow her to her office. She feels like an idiot, not having said anything at all, but she can't help it, no words would come out.

The woman doesn't seem to notice the somewhat odd behavior though and dives in to telling Quinn about the agency as soon as they've reached her moderately sized office and sat down.

"So Quinn, let me tell you about our agency," she hands Quinn a pamphlet and continues, "We're a rather small agency- very hands on and personal. We have a little over 3,500 couples on our waiting list for a child. We screen potential parents extensively and at least three of our staff members spend ample time with them. I'm always one of those staff members. I always spend at least half a day with anyone looking to get a child through our agency. So if you choose us you'll have a wide variety of parents to choose from and you'll be able to rest assured that they'll all be very good parents who will be able to provide your child with a wonderful life."

"We like to take care of the birth mothers who use our agency. We offer scholarships because we believe that if you're going to give up something as life-altering as your child, your life should be as full of good changes as possible so we try to help you stay in college by paying you a substantial amount all four years- provided you get into college. I can't give you an exact amount at this stage, but it'd be very safe to assume that you could afford to spend four years at a state school without having to worry about paying anything towards tuition."

"In order to get to that point in your life and be successful later on though, we think it's necessary that you get some help after the adoption. That's why we have a psychologist, in house, who we require our birth mothers to visit a minimum of four times: within days of giving up the baby, a month after that, two months later and then another two months later. So we basically check in on you for the first five months following the adoption."

"Now…I don't know how much you've looked into adoption, but there are basically two paths you could choose. You could have a closed adoption, which is where, after giving up your rights, you never see your child again unless the child seeks you out or you seek him or her out after he or she is twenty one- that's as soon as you'd have the option to do that if you choose to have a closed adoption. I'd say about…seventy-five percent of the adoptions we handle end up being closed, though most of our parents looking to adopt are fine with the birth mother choosing either option. I think most birth mothers think it'll be easier to move on if they have a closed adoption. As far as open adoptions…there's a new trend where open adoptions are becoming very...open, where the birth parent or parents are included in the adoptive family as if they are all one large family or where the birth parents are the regular babysitters or regularly get time with the child they gave up and honestly, if that's something you're looking for, you're not going to find it in our agency or any others. We have to be very strict with what we do since adoption is our business and a legal matter, it's just easier for us if we only allow the adoptive parents and birth parents that use us to only have the option of a traditional open adoption where the birth parents get an update on the child in the form of a phone call or letter and some pictures every so often and possibly an occasional visit- frequency up to the discretion of the parties involved though definitely not so frequent that it could be considered one of those new fangled open adoptions."

The woman takes a deep breath and laughs a little at herself, "I'm sorry, I've been rambling on again. I do this so often it just comes all spilling out in a giant speech without even thinking about it. So, Quinn, I know I just inundated you with information, but do you have any questions about anything? Or anything you were specifically looking for in an agency?"

Quinn freezes. The woman just told her so much stuff and it's a lot to process. (Though she knows that's not the reason for being stuck now. It's a valid reason, but not the real one, which is that she's overwhelmed by everything not just the information coming at her. She can't believe she's really here, sitting in an adoption agency, one she might be visiting frequently if she picks it, one where she may give up the baby that she suddenly feels too young to be having more than she ever has before.) "Uh," is all she's able to manage.

"You know what, how about I just give you my card and you can call me any time if you think of anything you want to know or discuss anything," the woman says, letting her off the hook and handing her card across the desk. "I know I just gave you a lot to consider and this is a difficult decision so really, feel free to call about anything," she reiterates with a kind smile.

"Thank you," Quinn responds happy that she was able to get words out for a change, but still feeling dumb for not being able to say anything else the whole time she was at this first agency.

Once she's outside in her car, feeling like she's able to breathe again, Quinn realizes that it didn't seem like the woman she met with was really trying to sell her on giving up the baby, just laying out what it would be like to use their agency. From things she had read about adoption agencies, she expected that they would push her into believing that giving up the baby is her only option because getting women to give up their child was the only way they made a profit so that's what a lot of agencies were like. But now, with this agency having seemed straightforward and non-coercive to birth mothers, she wonders if the stuff she had read had been wrong. She heads for the second agency and prays she won't lose her voice at this one too.

The second agency is very different. She's directed to a side of the waiting room and it's very apparent why she was told to sit to her left from the receptionist. On the right side of the room the coffee tables have parenting and family magazines on them, but on the side she was directed to there are teen magazines like _Seventeen_ and _Elle_. She has a feeling that this is going to be a very different experience than the last agency.

After ten minutes in the waiting room (five after her appointment was scheduled for), a woman comes into the waiting room and asks, "Quinn?"

"Yes," Quinn confirms, happy that this time she's said something and appointment hasn't even really started yet- that's an improvement over the last meeting. Or at least equal to it as she had confirmed her own name there too.

"Hi, I'm Elizabeth Park, but you can call me Lizzie," the woman says brightly as she extends her hand.

Quinn shakes the woman's hand but groans internally. The feeling she had about this agency not being a good one just grew exponentially upon meeting the overly-cheery, giant-fake-smile "Lizzie."

Quinn follows the woman to her office, which is smaller than the woman at the last agency, and oddly enough it's decorated like a Target ad for college dorm room supplies and decorations.

"So, Quinn, you're having a baby," Lizzie says with a smile, "I bet you never planned on that."

"Of course not, I'm sixteen," Quinn responds, brows furrowing. She feels like she's missing something. Is this woman on something? Of course she's having a baby, she's at an adoption agency. And she knows the woman knows she's sixteen (she had to fill out a short form when she got here and it's currently right in front of Lizzie) so of course she wasn't planning on having a baby.

"Exactly! You're _sixteen_, majority of our clients are around your age and what we like to do for them and what we'd like to do for you is help you get back to being sixteen. A baby is _way_ too much responsibility and so time consuming. If you had a baby, you can forget about going to school dances or out on a date, which is why giving up your baby is the right thing to do. You're young and you deserve to get to enjoy your youth and let someone older, who's life is all boring and "adult," take care of your baby."

"So, before you have the baby you'll sign the little critter over to the parents of your choosing- we have tons and they're all really awesome- and then once you have it you'll get your life back to the way it was. And we'll help out with that. We give you a scholarship. Although," the woman pauses and winks, "what you use it for is up to you. You know, use it for whatever will help you get your life back. Because that's what your life should be about at your age- _you_. Not some baby that you never intended to get pregnant with."

Lizzie smiles still, like she hasn't been saying tons of awful things, and asks, "So Quinn, if you had, say… thirty thousand dollars and the freedom to do anything you want, what would you do?"

Either this woman or this place is absolutely repulsive. Quinn wants to get up and walk out, but she's only been listening to this woman for less than five minutes and she thinks maybe it's just a bad first impression. Plus on her way to this agency she realized there was a question she should have asked the last one so she might as well at least give this one the chance to answer. "Well… actually, I was just wondering what services you'd offer for the father of a child given up using your agency?"

Lizzie is surprised by the question, "Honestly, we very rarely have fathers come in with the birth mothers." She considers it for a second and offers with that same oblivious smile, "But if the father of your baby would like, I'm sure we could work out something for him to get a "scholarship" as well."

Quinn sighs. Okay, it's official, she hates this place. She could just walk out or offer a polite "I'm not interested," or "I don't think this is a good fit for me," but, honestly, she just doesn't feel like it.

"So what you're basically saying is that you're going to give me and the father of my baby money so we give it up for adoption? You're going to _buy_ my baby?" Quinn asks, putting the woman on the spot.

"Of course not, that'd be illegal," Lizzie denies immediately. She lowers her voice, leans in across the desk, "Although, if that's the way you'd like to think of it…well, that'd just be your interpretation- anything that helps you through your situation, we'd be okay with that."

And now, Quinn has really had enough of this place. She smiles and says with her practiced authoritative tone, "Lizzie, you're an idiot." She drops the smile as she continues, "I can't believe I sat here and listened to you for this long. You really think that your strategy, pitching a carefree lifestyle, is the way to get someone to agree to give up their child and use your agency? Don't you think a girl who's ended up here has been carefree enough and that's probably her biggest regret as she sits across from you trying to deal with the fact that she's probably going to have to give up a child because she was careless and ended up pregnant too young?"

She pulls on her coat and stands up as she continues, "And you know, talking about the baby like it's an old pair of shoes you're going to get rid of and feel better once you do is just…heartless. No matter how much any woman who sits across from you regrets getting pregnant, the baby she's having is still a part of her and talking about it like it's some "little critter" that she won't and doesn't feel anything for doesn't change that this…is difficult and _painful_. I…I can't use your agency because I'm smarter than you. At least I know your pitch is moronic. And I can't let an idiot have anything to do with the fate of my baby."

Quinn reaches for the paper in front of Lizzie with her information on it and rips it in quarters. She takes it with her as she slams the door open, just to make sure they don't have a way to contact her ever. When she gets to the waiting room she doesn't see anyone on the side she was told to sit on, but she sees two couples on the other side. She marches up to them and informs them, "The people here just offered to buy my baby. If I were you, I'd find a different agency. It's only a matter of time before this one gets flooded with lawsuits." The couples look skeptical, but worried and she really doesn't want to actually talk to any of them (or anyone who wants her baby right now) so she heads for the door and her car feeling more sure of herself than she has in a long time.

Quinn smiles as she drives home. She definitely found her voice at the last agency and she's really proud of herself. She didn't expect any agency to be that bad, but she's glad she called them out on it. She may have never spoken her mind around her parents, but she always used to get to at school and everyone would listen to her. Lately, standing up and voicing an opinion is something she hasn't gotten to do much. She's feared doing it at school (except with coach Sylvester) given how far she's fallen and though she's done it with her parents that one time, avoiding them doesn't provide her with the opportunity to do it any more. She doesn't miss being cruel or how she always had to work so hard just to stay at the top of the social pyramid (when the top didn't feel like that great of a place to be), but she has missed how being that Head Bitch In Charge part she would play gave her so much control (at least over part of her life). She certainly hasn't felt like she has much control in her life these last few months, so as much as actually having to consider adoption and these agencies thoroughly sucked, she does feel good about her reaction to the crappy agency.

She tells Puck this later on the phone. She knows he's not off work yet, but twenty minutes after she gets home he's calling her figuring she should just be out of the second appointment. When he eagerly asks her how the appointments went, she responds, "Oh, that last one was awful. They actually offered both of us money for the baby and they tried to talk me into giving her up by telling me that I could just hand her over to new parents and get back to dating and going to school dances. Like life will just magically return to the way it used to be once I give her up."

"That's ridiculous. Of course it won't be that easy," Puck responds, equally confused by how anyone could think that or try to persuade anyone that that was the way things would be. "So, what? You just left?"

"Not exactly," she tells him with a smile, "I called the woman an idiot and then I kind of tore into her and their pitch a little bit. I think she might have been crying when I left. And I tore up my information that they had on me so they couldn't contact me. And, honestly, if I ever find out what that woman drives…I'm considering keying her car."

"I'll be your lookout/ the guy who slashes her tires," Puck offers. With a fondness, he admits, "You know, I've really wanted to slash some tires lately."

"I know. And if we do ever find out what she drives, I won't even try to stop you," she says, though she's not sure she means it. She probably wouldn't even go through with keying the woman's car. She's just still disturbed and angry that some place like that exists, that takes advantage of women when they're vulnerable by making promises that they have no possible way of coming through on.

Quinn thinks that maybe a part of her is clinging to taking the way the last agency worked personally because she really liked (and missed) this feeling that putting them in their place before she walked out their door gave her. "I miss getting to do stuff like today. Getting to be right, and in control. Nothing ever seems to be that way anymore."

She's right, nothing does seem to be like that anymore. Puck had never often been right, so right now and occasionally doing something good with Quinn or something right at work is actually an improvement for him, but based no the way her life used to be and the way it was now, he could see why she missed that. He also had no idea how to change that about her life right now so instead he suggests, "Well maybe some of the places tomorrow will be equally crappy and you'll get to verbally rip them to shreds too."

"Speaking of tomorrow, I should really call Kurt and Mercedes. And I have to call Jess too," Quinn adds, realizing she should probably get off the phone with Puck soon, she had a lot she still needed to do today.

"I'm really glad you decided to take them with you. I didn't like the idea of you going all the way to Columbus by yourself," Puck says, probably for the hundredth time in the last week.

"You should be thanking Kurt and Mercedes. They're the ones that asked if I could use company because they've been really wanting to go to Easton Town Center. Apparently it's a really big mall and they want to do some shopping," Quinn details. She had originally suspected that Puck had already told them about her trip to Columbus and had asked them to come up with a reason to go. But both of them swore that they've been wanting a reason to go to Columbus to see this place for a while and they never talked to Puck about anything. She doesn't think either one of them are particularly gifted at lying so she had decided to believe them. (Still, she'll be looking for them to slip up tomorrow. It seemed too convenient.)

"Yeah, Kurt's been talking about it in geometry ever since you said he could come with you. I don't see how a mall could be any better than any other mall. A mall's a mall," Puck responds casually. He knows Quinn's been suspecting that he had something to do with Kurt and Mercedes' desire to go to Columbus, but he didn't. Although he did know that they wanted to before Quinn did so he knows it could easily look like he persuaded them and he doesn't want Quinn to start thinking that. They're going with her because they're her friends, he doesn't want it to look like anything other than just that.

She chuckles at his attitude toward malls and offers, "I'll take pictures tomorrow to help explain it to you." With regret she adds, "And if I'm going to get everything done today so that I can go tomorrow, I really should go."

"Yeah," he accepts with a sigh.

But he doesn't say goodbye and neither does she. Instead hanging on the line just a little bit longer.

After thirty seconds of silence, the end can't be put off any longer (without the fact that they're doing so being painfully obvious). So Puck offers, "Well…have fun shopping tomorrow and good luck with the agencies. Hope they go better than that second one today."

"Thanks," she responds, worrying her lip between her teeth.

"Call if you need anything," he says even though he knows it's pretty much the arrangement they've had for a while. (He can't help voicing it again right now, he's nervous about tomorrow. About her being at the agencies alone, about what that will be like for her, about what it may result in.)

"Of course," she assures, "I'll text you when we get there tomorrow, when I'm done with the appointments, and when we're heading back. And if it's not too late I'll call when I get home."

"It won't be too late," Puck blurts without thinking. He wanted to be cooler than that, but instead he knew he just let his eagerness show through. He might as well go with it, he figures, and admits, "There's never been a bad time for _you_ to call me."

Quinn really wants to say "ditto," but…all of that is something she's not supposed to be thinking about right now. So instead she says, "Challenge accepted. I'll call you tomorrow, technically Sunday, between the hours of two and five in the morning and put that claim to the test."

"You're on," he tells her, though really he's hoping that if she is serious, she'll also call much sooner than that. He doesn't want to go all day and all night tomorrow without talking to her.

She says goodbye and makes her other phone calls. On her three-way call with Kurt and Mercedes they don't ask her about the appointments they know she just went to and they don't mention the ones she'll be going to tomorrow except to call them when she's done so she knows where to meet up with them. When she talks to Jessica though, of course she asks about it. Quinn's brief in describing the first place, but tells her sister all of the same things about the second that she told Puck.

"Good for you," Jessica compliments after Quinn's told her how she dealt with the awful attitude of the second adoption agency she went to. "I'll leave them a bad review on your behalf on Yelp. That's about as much as I can do until I get this cast off," Jessica offers.

"Which you will soon," Quinn assures.

"It's only a possibility at my appointment Monday. The doctor said "maybe" not "definitely." Either way though, I will be making it out to see your competition next weekend so be ready for a visit. And absolutely don't mention me being in town to mom and dad. I'm so not up for a visit with them," Jessica transitions. She could have tried to surprise Quinn, but there didn't seem to be much point to that. As long as Quinn knew she had family around to support her in everything (even a glee competition) that was what mattered. Whether or not it was a surprise seemed unimportant in comparison.

Quinn wants to tell her sister that if she doesn't get her cast off she knows how hard it would be for her to travel that far so she really doesn't have to come. But, while she wants to make that clear to Jessica, she also wants to keep her hopes up about her leg finally healing correctly and her being able to get the cast off Monday so instead of voicing her initial concern, she tells her, "You better be there. Besides family members of people in the club, our glee club doesn't have much support. One of the clubs we'll be up against this time has it's own Facebook page and a ton of fans. We're going to need all the people rooting for us we can get."

"I'll bring my old pom pomes," Jessica jokes (sort of).

"Don't," Quinn warns knowing that though her sister wasn't serious, it's probably quickly starting to sound like a really good idea to her.

They go back and forth for a while. Jessica making extravagant claims of what she's going to do as an audience member to root for Quinn's glee club (and seriously considering many of them even if they started out as jokes) and Quinn playfully threatening her not to. It's fun, the teasing, and it takes Quinn's mind off of tomorrow for the rest of the evening.

Until she goes to bed at least. When she only has a matter of hours separating her from the appointments tomorrow, her nerves start to get to her again. By this time tomorrow she'll have been to the place that will arrange for her to give her daughter away. She sleeps fitfully.

-o-o-o-

Puck is relieved when his phone call with Quinn ends. Not that he doesn't like talking to her (he looks forward to every second of it), but if she happened to ask what he'd be doing at work tomorrow, as she frequently did, he's not sure he could have remained cool enough to lie.

Tomorrow, he's seeing the house his mother put on offer on. Well, actually two offers. Her first got rejected- she totally low-balled them, figured it was worth a try- and now she had a second, more reasonable one the bank was considering. The first offer's rejection and Hank having a paying job he needed to see to had canceled seeing the house last weekend, which Puck wasn't at all happy about. He had enough stuff to worry about with the baby and Quinn, but lately he's had to add whether or not his mom was pursuing buying a complete dump to the list because he still hadn't seen the house. Nor would she give him the address or even street name so he could at least drive by and possibly get the slightest piece of mind. So he's looking forward to and is nervous about tomorrow, so much so that if Quinn had asked him about it, he's pretty sure he would have completely botched a lie.

When Saturday morning finally comes around, it comes slowly for Puck. As he heads out to their first job of the day with Hank, he texts Quinn to have a good day and tells her to buy him something- just to try to lighten the mood and take her mind off of everything. He gets a text back that they're leaving town now and he tries to remind himself that she wanted to do this alone and he had to accept it (even if he felt like he was sort of abandoning her by not going).

It seems like it takes forever for one to finally roll around, but when it does Puck is wary as Hank turns on to Market Street. He knows that there are a lot of houses on Market that it would be a generous over statement to call "fixer uppers." Hank brings the truck to a stop in front of 1011 and Puck sees his mom waiting on the front steps. It's not the worst house on the street or even the block, but that fact does nothing to convince Puck that this house is a good idea.

In his worry, Puck realizes that he's lingered in the truck and when he gets out Hank is already joining his mom on the front steps and he can hear him say, "May, it's nice to finally meet you."

"You too. And thank you so much for giving Noah a job and for coming out here to take a look at the house. It's the first house I've ever tried to buy, my financial advisor recommended it, and I just want to make sure I'm not getting in over my head with things that would need to be done," May tells him gratefully and rambling, excited that she may be standing on the steps to her future home.

"Well I'm happy to help. I've always found that lending a hand wherever you can for any family or friend of an employee or co-worker makes for a much better working environment. So it's kind of a policy with me and my guys- anyone of them or anyone they know needs help, they get it. Simple as that," Hank offers with a smile. He's pretty sure this policy is what's led to his luck in having lots of really great employees over the years and every time he thinks of it he says a silent thank you to his wife- it was her idea after all.

"If it's okay with you, I'd like to do a walk through of the house. I'll make a list of everything I think needs work and then I'll go through it with you and we'll discuss what would be high priority and what would be low priority that you could get away without addressing for a while. We can discuss what everything would cost you as well," Hank proposes.

"Sure, that's fine," May agrees.

"Puck, this is a good opportunity for you to show me what you've learned on the job these past six weeks and from those books you should be reading," Hank says ripping a piece of paper off of his legal pad and handing it to Puck with a pen, "I want you to do the same thing I'm going to be doing. Walk around the house and make a list of everything you think needs work and label it high priority or low priority. You should be done by the time I am." With that, Hank walks into the house to get started.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Get started," May encourages her son. She adds quietly, "And I'll try to make sure I stay out of the same room as Hank so we can talk without it looking like you're asking for help. If you need help, I've looked around the house a lot, I know a lot of things that should be on your list, so just come find me."

"Thanks," Puck says gratefully. He didn't expect to have to prove what he's learned so far when they started the day, but the pressure of the task is a really effective distraction to worrying about what his mom may be getting herself into with this house.

Puck makes it all the way through the house once and realizes that his list is barely a half a page long and Hank has only been through the upstairs. So he walks through a second time and Hank still isn't done so he walks through third. The fact that he's added to his list significantly each walk through makes him nervous about what other obvious things he might still be missing, but it's been nearly an hour and Hank is finally done so his time is up.

May is waiting in the kitchen and when Hank finishes he motions for Puck to follow him in there to talk to his mom.

"Do you mind if I ask how much this house is going for?" Hank asks May.

"They're asking $54,900, that's a reduced price. I low-balled them by offering $35,000- figured it was worth a try. Then my realtor recommended something they're more likely to accept for my second offer- $47,000," May tells him.

"Forty-seven thousand dollars Ma'? We don't have that kind of money," Puck says, shocked.

"It's a house. You don't pay for it all at once. And since your father was a jackass and had our house only in his name and then sold it to get us out, I qualify as a first time buyer, which gives me better interest rates. I only plan to put $5,000 down, which we do have, and then with a thirty year mortgage the monthly payment will only be $210," May explains.

"That's $290 less than we pay per month for the apartment," Puck realizes.

"Yeah, I know. I told you that Steve is a really good financial advisor. We should have gotten a house as soon as the housing market took a dive, we could have been saving money for a couple of years now as we will be in the long run if we get a house around the same price as this one," May tells her son, wishing she had pulled her life together after her husband left sooner. They could have been doing a lot better if she had.

"Well I think this house is a good investment for you," Hank cuts in, "there are several things that need work, but most of them are small things and about half of what's left once the small things are off your list are low priority things that you don't need to rush to get done. But what really makes this house a good investment is that the last people who bought it got some of the really costly remodeling done before they lost it to the bank. You've got a new roof that should probably last you twenty-years or so. All of the windows are dual pane and new- although the two upstairs ones that face the street don't match, but that's a low priority item we could fix for you in time. All the pipes and electrical are in good working order and structurally everything seems sound as well. The upstairs bathroom has been completely remodeled. The down stairs bathroom is nearly complete- you just need a showerhead and either a rod for a shower curtain or we could build a shower door. You also need a sink in that bathroom and I'd recommend replacing the cabinetry the previous owners selected for it, it doesn't really fit the room. The kitchen has also been partially remodeled. So all of that remodeling really makes this house a pretty smart investment."

"But…" May propositions, sensing that he had one coming.

"But," Hank continues, "it's going to cost you some serious money to live here. Mainly because of this kitchen. The only appliance it has is a dishwasher, which doesn't work, and all new appliances- especially since that space over there is for a double oven- is going to be expensive. I do know a few places that you could get used appliances at though getting them in the same color could be a bit tricky. It could be done though and then all of them could total to about…$1,500 or so. And then the less expensive aspect of this room that needs to be finished is the cabinetry since they only half of it is finished."

Hank glances at his list, then he takes Puck's from him and reads over it. He critiques, "In the future, it's smarter to make lists like this by room- makes organizing easier. It seems like you've got majority of the stuff on there that you should have- except stuff you should learn that I haven't mentioned yet, but that you'll probably be learning very soon."

Hank then lays out his plan for Puck and May. He'd like to have Puck do nearly all of the work on the house by himself so May doesn't have to pay someone to do it. The things Puck will do will be: ripping up the carpet in the family room and refinishing the hardwood floors Hank found underneath, ripping up the carpet in all four bedrooms and installing new carpet, adding crown molding to the family room to match what had been installed in the dinning room, living room, and kitchen, building and installing cabinets to match the ones there in the kitchen, finishing up the down stairs bathroom with whatever they decide they want in there, installing some shelves in the back of the oversized linen closet upstairs, installing a new front door and back door, and painting every room except the bathrooms as they had already been painted. Also, once the summer came, the exterior of the house would need to be pained as well.

As for when Puck is supposed to find the time to do this, Hank adds, "We have a big renovation project we're starting this week that all the guys are going to be working on, but I can let Puck off three days during the week to work on this house. I expect he'd be able to start soon- I'm pretty sure your offer will be accepted, in my experience at least. If he could do everything here on his own- though I'll check in sometimes and I do want you to ask if you need help with anything so I can walk you through it- I'd feel comfortable enough in some of his skills to let him do some jobs alone and earn a full wage for those jobs, even though you won't have your license until this time next year probably."

That really catches Puck's attention. He's starting to really hope his mom gets this house and he's grateful she picked now to get one because he could really use the opportunity to earn more money and he probably wouldn't be getting it if it wasn't for this job (though he realizes that for a while he'll be earning less because he'll be working on this house instead of on any jobs for Hank, but it should work out in his favor financially in the end).

Hank offers to May, "I already have some left over materials that should come in handy that I can give you. I'm pretty sure I have some wood that will work for the crown molding and to re-do that strange molding they did to make the window out front match the door. I can help you find a good deal on carpet and on the appliances. Make sure you check craigslist before going out and buying things brand new to save yourself some money- a lot of contractors, myself included, will sell spare stuff from past jobs on there so you can find a lot of good stuff usually."

"Great. Thank you so much for your help," May says, probably for the tenth time today.

"There's one more thing I'd like to discuss with you- your basement," Hank begins.

"There's a basement?" Puck asks. He had completely missed that.

"The door's behind the stairs…next to the down stairs bathroom," Hank tells him. "When you walk through a house like we were doing here, never leave a door unopened even if you think it's just a closet," he advises. Hank motions for both of them to follow him and leads them down into the basement.

"How big is this house anyway?" Puck asks his mother on the way down.

"Just over 2,600 square feet- which for some reason includes that dinky disconnected garage, but not the basement or the attic," May answers.

Puck knew it was way bigger than the apartment, but then again everything felt bigger than the apartment. But, whoa, it was kind of huge (for him at least- he's pretty sure Quinn's parent's house is twice this one's size). Wait though... "There's an attic?"

"Yep," Hank answers, "it's so tiny though, it's not even going to be much of a storage space for you and it's not going to be an easy one to get to because it's only accessible through a door in the closet of the master bedroom." Getting back to the purpose he had leading them down here, Hank gestures to the walls and tells them, "This is an unfinished basement. You see that on a lot of houses around here and a lot of people like to have someone come in, finish them off, so they can turn it into an extra bedroom or an entertainment room or office or what have you. We get a lot of work from doing basements and last year I had two of my guys take on a basement job and though I had never had them do one before, they both claimed they had and could handle it no problem. I ended up having to spend a week doing nothing but fixing their many, many mistakes. One of those guys moved and no longer works for me, but the other one and Puck need experience in finishing a basement. So, if it's okay with you, even though it's not a necessity, I'd like to finish off your basement. We could even enclose the laundry area to be separate from the rest of the room if you'd like. All of the materials would be on me, of course, since it'd be helping me out and training sometimes results in using more materials than usual when something has to get redone. We wouldn't do anything too extravagant- just insulation, drywall, installing some better lighting, and installing a floor over the concrete. So…would that be okay with you if we did that?"

"Yeah, absolutely," May accepts. She's not about to turn down someone offering to fix up part of her potential house for free.

"Great. We'd probably get to it right after we finish this big remodel we're about to start so we could do it…we could probably start in about a month," Hank offers.

"That's wonderful. If we get the house, I was hoping we'd be able to move in within a month- two at the absolute most. I don't want to have to pay rent and a mortgage for longer than that," May tells him.

"Well, provided that we can find all the rest of the materials you'll need at reasonable prices, and if you can find a couple of people to help you do the easy stuff like paint, I think Puck should be able to finish all the rest of the work in a month," Hank estimates.

Puck isn't so sure about that. Hank's list of stuff for him to do seemed kind of long. Especially for just one person to complete three days a week after school. He's probably going to be working some nights, he realizes (which will probably mean seeing less of Quinn…although on the bright side it will probably get him out of that double date Rachel wanted them to go on).

Hank makes a list of places for May to go to look for appliances and tells her that he'll send Puck home with a typed up list of everything that needs to be fixed, by room, with the priority labeled for each one and a cost estimate for materials only. He wishes her luck in getting the house and gives Puck a moment alone with his mother by heading out to the truck to wait for him.

"So what do you think of the place?" May asks eagerly.

"It could be really good," he admits. The house isn't currently in great shape, but what work it will take will help him out with his job so it's not so bad. "And it might mean a lot of money going out in like the same month, but in the long run it should take less of your paycheck each month so you should have more money free each month, right? And that'd be a good thing?"

"Basically that's how it should work. But if I can ever afford to pay more than the monthly payment I will be so that I don't have to take thirty years to pay it off," May tells him. She waits a beat, and then another. Apparently her son is not going to mention what she was hoping he'd mention. So, she comments not so innocently, "You know, I was thinking that the Master bedroom would be my room-obviously- the room across the landing from it would be perfect for Kelyn, the room next to mine would be perfect for you, and the bedroom across from that room could be really great for Quinn…and a baby."

"She's literally at an adoption agency right now Ma'," Puck says with a groan.

"I know, but it's not like she's signing any papers. There's still plenty of time to make decisions and she should know that this is one of her choices," May points out.

"I'm not going to tell her about the house or the room yet," Puck repeats for what feels like to him the hundredth time.

"You can't keep avoiding telling her forever," May warns.

"Forever?" He questions, his mom could be so overdramatic sometimes, "It's barely been over a week since you told me about this house and it's not even yours yet. At the very least I'm not telling her about it until the house is yours and the room you want her to have doesn't have moldy carpet and peeling paint," Puck rationalizes. (Though, honestly, he's incredibly nervous about the idea of telling her about it. What if she completely hates the idea and then starts hating him for brining it up?)

May gives her son a stern look. She knows he's bullshitting her more than a little at the moment. Telling Quinn is not something he's looking forward to doing and he's going to avoid it. She raises an eyebrow slowly.

Under his mom's scrutiny, Puck revises, "I'll work on the room you want to be hers first though." As nervous as he is about telling Quinn, he knows his mom is not going to get away with not telling her for too long and if he doesn't manage to convince his mom that he is going to tell her, she'll tell her herself and he really, really doesn't want Quinn to find out about it from his mom (it may make it look like he doesn't really want her here if his mom is the one to tell her).

"Fine," May accepts, "but if she doesn't know by the end of February, I'm telling her myself. That should give you plenty of time to get the room fixed up and most of the rest of the house if not all of it and be completely out of excuses."

"Fine. Hank's waiting so I should get back to work. I'll see you later," Puck says calmly, like the deadline of slightly less than six weeks doesn't completely freak him out. As soon as he's out of the kitchen though, he picks up his pace considerably so his mom can't catch up with him and therefore catch on to the fact that she knows him as well as she thinks she does and her tactic to motivate him was going to work. (Just not soon. Probably not for at least five weeks. He can't see himself going through with this until he's right up against the deadline.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn picks Mercedes and Kurt up bright and early and they hit the road for Columbus.

Though they hadn't really talked about what Quinn would be leaving them to do for majority of the morning/early afternoon, it quickly became clear that Kurt and Mercedes were very aware of it and the weight of the situation. (Either that or the fact that she's ridiculously nervous didn't escape them.) They insist on upbeat music being played and they make a clear effort to keep the conversation flowing (and decidedly away from everything baby/adoption related).

The three glee clubbers also find themselves making an effort to stay upbeat when they talk about Regional's next week, but it's difficult. All of them find themselves avoiding saying that the Journey theme is seeming like an increasingly poor choice. It's a nice idea, sentimental and seems fitting, but they're not a winning combination of songs. That much has become very clear.

They find themselves arriving in Columbus sooner that Quinn expected (though right on time according to her navigation system's prediction). She drops Kurt and Mercedes off at the mall calling after Kurt one last time not to buy her any maternity clothes (he's been going on and on about wanting to find her something that screams "hot mama"). She drives to her first appointment and gets there with barely a minute to spare. But the near-tardiness only serves to distract her as she rushes into the office building, scans the listing for the correct floor and office, and gets on the elevator. By the time it's opening its doors at the right floor, she's practically shaking with anxiety again.

The woman she meets with at this first place of the day has a warm smile and it helps Quinn find her voice when the woman introduces herself. This, actually being able to say something even if it's just "you too" in response to the woman's "it's nice to meet you," helps calm Quinn considerably.

The woman launches into a similar speech to the one she heard at the first place she went in Lima yesterday. However, once the woman is done, she asks Quinn a few questions. The first is, "How far along are you?"

"Twenty-one weeks today," Quinn answers, unsure of where the woman was going with this.

"Really? You don't look it at all," she compliments with a genuine smile. Before Quinn can say thank you, she continues, "And it gives you plenty of time. You can start the process of looking through our parents and trying to decide on some as soon as you'd like, but if you need time to make a decision, you can wait a while. Our agency can work quickly on the legal end of things and we have plenty of parents that wouldn't mind getting as little as a month's notice about getting a baby so if you need time, know that with our agency you definitely have it."

"That's good," Quinn thinks. Explaining, she adds, "I'm not really sure yet…what I'm going to do. I know adoption is probably the smartest decision, but…"

The woman nods understandingly. She seems to have a lot of experience in these situations and asks, "Do you have anyone that would help you if you kept your baby?"

"Her father and his family. But they're not in the best financial situation. I have some really supportive friends that I could count on for help with things like babysitting if I ever needed it probably. But my parents aren't…they kicked me out and I had to blackmail them to live there for the duration of my pregnancy and then I'll be out again so they're not an option. And I have some money from selling my car, but I don't have a job or much work experience to help me get one so, financially, I don't know if I'd be able to take care of her," Quinn answers, the things that have constantly been on her mind spilling out.

"Well," the woman drawls, "honestly, there are plenty of teens that ended up pregnant and kept their baby and made it work. I've heard of worse situations than yours that single teenaged mothers have been in and they've ultimately been fine. It wouldn't be easy, and it would be largely dependent on being able to make your resources work for you- which it already sounds like you've been good at that- but it's not impossible for you to keep your baby. What you need to decide is what you want for your life. I know your instinct is to think about her future, but either way she's going to be loved. And maybe she'll have a more comfortable life depending on what parents you pick, but you'd make sure she's taken care of too, no matter how hard it is. So either way, she's going to be loved and taken care of. So, think about what you want and if it's adoption we can help you find a really great family to give your daughter."

Quinn's never had it put that way before. To think that this woman is recommending not letting her daughter's future be a factor in deciding what to do seems illogical.

(But in the back of her mind she worries that this woman has a point. There's no way she'd let her daughter go hungry or not have the things she'd need, no matter what she had to do to get them. So maybe the reason she's been so undecided is because she's not sure if she could be someone's mother now or if she wants to try and be a teenager again.

Isn't that horrible of her? Maybe not, but it makes her feel awful all the same. It feels selfish to think of the decision in terms of herself and she fears that she might have to consider it at some point.)

The woman gives her her card and tells her to call with any questions or concerns and Quinn leaves trying to forget the appointment entirely.

The second agency helps her forget the first. It's obvious from the first few minutes that it's not the right place, so Quinn decides to have some fun.

Apparently, when the lady she's meeting with quickly noticed the cross around Quinn's neck, she decided on a strategy.

After the fifth time the woman says "God would want you to find a nice Christian family for your child," Quinn considers that perhaps she could use this situation to enjoy herself. Then the woman adds on, "And after you do that for your baby, God would want you to live a pure, abstinent life until you're married so that you don't have to go through this again."

It's probably not very nice of her to screw with this woman, but she gave Quinn such a good opportunity that she can't resist. She gives the woman an odd look accompanied by a smile as she tells her, "But…I've always been abstinent."

Naturally, the woman is confused. She splutters, "B-but-"

"My baby was a gift from God," Quinn cuts in, smiling but serious as she implores the woman, "the conception was immaculate. And don't misunderstand, I'm very honored that God chose me to give birth to the second coming of Christ, but my parents made the point that God knows I'm cheer captain and that my schedule is quite full so he must have meant for me to only give birth to the child and let someone else raise him. So, obviously, I'm glad to hear you have Christian couples to choose from. I can't let the son of God be raised by atheists."

The woman is stunned. She's looking at Quinn like she's insane and Quinn just blinks innocently and smiles like she didn't say something bat-shit crazy.

It takes a few minutes, but the shocked woman finally finds her voice and says, "Well, it sounds like you know what you want in parents so would you like to get started looking at some?"

"What?" Quinn asks, looking away from the woman.

"I said-"

"No, not you," Quinn cuts the woman off sharply, turns her eyes up and pretends to listen to something that isn't there. She lets this linger on for a minute before standing up and grabbing her coat as she says, "I have to go."

"What?" the woman asks, perplexed by the sudden shift as much as she was by the silence.

Quinn gets to the door, turns to face the woman, and tells her, "God just spoke to me and said that you're not being honest. He told me that you decided on how to convince me to use your agency for the child when you saw the cross on my necklace and that you don't actually believe anything you've said to me. He said this is a despicable institution and you're going to hell for using lies to persuade vulnerable girls." She doesn't say any of this in the tone of innocent conviction she had been using. Instead she uses the authoritative, slightly bitchy, tone she used when she laid out harsh truths to fellow Cheerios or her other peers.

With one last withering glare to the woman, she strides confidently out the door. She worries that the woman might have been too stupid to understand that the "having the child of God" thing was just a lie and that she had actually just caught on to her horrible tactic, but either way she figures the woman's got to be having a worse day now (told off by a sixteen year old in all) so her mission is accomplished.

The third agency is a lot like the first of the day. Except without the directive to think of what she wants for her future rather than what she wants for the baby's future. Plus the last agency tells her that they have many single parents and gay couples on their waiting list if she's wants to or is willing to consider choosing something less traditional for her daughter.

It's only been a little over two hours since she dropped Kurt and Mercedes off at the mall, but as Quinn heads back there to meet up with them she feels like it's been forever since that happened. The last two hours were as draining as an entire day. (Especially emotionally. And the day wasn't even close to being over yet.)

-o-o-o-

When she meets up with them, Kurt and Mercedes insist that Quinn pick where they're going to go for their slightly late lunch. She picks Cosi, because it's Parisian and Kurt had commented on it on the drive today (he likes places that allow him to pretend he's in Paris…or anywhere besides Ohio really). She doesn't give it much thought, the fact that they made her pick, not until they're sitting down at the café at least and the first thing they say to her after they've show her their purchases so far is, "How'd the appointments go?"

Kurt asks this question with more seriousness than is usually present in his tone and at the question Mercedes seems particularly attentive as well.

"Fine," Quinn tells them. "The second place was morally suspect so I didn't spend too long there. But the other two were good," she tells them with her voice even and her words sure (she's always been good at lying- something she's definitely grateful for in this moment). Trying to change the topic, she adds with a devious smirk to Kurt, "You know, I should give you the name of the last agency I went to for when you're older. They have lots of gay couples on their list."

"God, can you imagine me with a baby?" Kurt asks. "Kids," he comments with a shudder and distaste in his voice. "And even if I changed my mind about kids, I wouldn't ever do it alone and the chance of me ever being in a couple seem slim given that I haven't even gone on my first gay date," Kurt continues with a hint of frustration.

"Speaking of your love life, Finn said that him and his mom might be moving in with you and your dad in the not too distant future. Are you worried about that? I mean, it must be awkward to live with your crush," Quinn asks, still steering the conversation firmly away from her.

"Can't be any more awkward than having a baby with your crush," Kurt sasses.

Mercedes laughs heartily while Quinn's mouth hangs open in shock. For a second she can't believe he went there, but then she remembers it's Kurt, who never holds back and has fun calling people out, so really she should have known she was walking right into that one. She begins, "That is not-"

"Your situation," Kurt finishes, "I know, we all know." He mutters, "And we all know 'crush' isn't the right word too."

(Quinn hears him, but ignores it.)

"But to answer your question, Finn is now my _former_ crush," Kurt emphasizes, "but it will be weird to live with him and with Carol. It's been just my dad and me for a long time now, half my life. Before that, that was the house we shared with my mom and now we're going to have two more people living there. So…it's definitely going to be an adjustment."

"It'll be a good thing though," Kurt continues, "my dad is happy with Carol so having her around more should be good for him. And maybe Finn could help me with my single-ness. Puck gave me a list of the guys at school he thinks are gay, but I don't know who half of them are but Finn probably does."

"Puck made you a list of gay guys at school?" Quinn questions flummoxed. That's certainly wasn't something she was expecting to hear.

"Yeah, he did it a while ago, that way maybe I can try to avoid crushing on straight guys in the future," Kurt answers. "He claims they're all just closeted and some of the ones I recognized were a definite surprise."

Mercedes, who had also been surprised to hear that not only Kurt had a list but also that it was made by Puck, asks engrossed, "Like who?"

"Not Sean, just in case you're worried history is repeating itself. He really does have eyes for you," Kurt qualms because even if she didn't say it or wasn't even thinking it yet, he knew his best friend well. He moves on quickly, "I suppose I probably shouldn't out the other names on the list. Even if they may not be correct." He looks to Quinn and Mercedes and they both nod in agreement that that would be the right thing to do. However, "But if you were to guess someone on the list…I suppose I could confirm if someone's on it. You know, that way we could discuss what the chances are that they belong there and possibly whether or not said guy would make a good match for me. After all, prom is only four months away and I will need a date."

Both girls smirk and spend the next hour guessing names on the list and discussing them.

Kurt insists that they shop for a couple of more hours before even considering leaving Columbus. Quinn is tired, as she always seems to be lately, but today left a lot of things on her mind she doesn't want to think about and Kurt constantly pestering her to "fierce up" her wardrobe is an effective distraction so she easily agrees to extending their trip.

They end up shopping until the evening and decide to get dinner before finally heading home just after eight thirty.

(Quinn knows as she drives them back that she's not looking forward to the two-hour ride ending and dropping the two of them off at their respective homes. When she does, she'll be left with nothing but her thoughts, which are even more troubling than usual at the moment.)

-o-o-o-

Quinn drops Mercedes off last and makes it all the way to her street before the tears start spilling. She pulls over when they do, even though she's only a block away from being home.

She's been to the place that will help her give her daughter up forever. _If_ she gives her daughter up for adoption. Maybe that woman was right, maybe she needs to be thinking about this differently. But the idea of thinking of it in terms of her future is scary.

(What if she realizes that she doesn't want a baby in her life for several more years? Doesn't that make her into her parents? Abandoning her child for selfish reasons?

Or, what if she realizes that she doesn't want to let her daughter go? What if she realizes she wants to be a mom now? She knows that path isn't the smartest or safest for either one of them.

And then there's the one thing she does know, the thing that the scare last week made very painfully clear: losing her daughter is going to absolutely crush her. If she doesn't get to see her for the rest of her life, it's going to shatter Quinn's heart. But is not wanting to live with a broken heart a good enough reason to keep the baby?)

The smart decision and the right decision aren't even distinguishable to Quinn anymore. Everything has blended together into choices that are just possibly bad. She's been lost, especially on this point, for months and today should have helped her get closer to a decision, but she feels more confused and lost and further from feeling good about a decision than ever.

Going home won't make her feel any better, she knows, so Quinn pulls herself together so she's not driving with tears clouding her vision and heads for the one person she knows will make her feel better.

-o-o-o-

Puck has been waiting for a call from Quinn all day. He's gotten a few texts from her since the morning one. Things like "heading in for the first appointment," "done with the appointments," and "staying to shop for a while." So he spent half the evening telling himself that he just hadn't heard from her because when it concerned shopping a girl saying "a while" meant several hours. But as the night grew on he got nervous that she had gotten back and hadn't called because of something that happened today, something with the appointments or the baby or him- even if they hadn't talked.

So when his phone finally rang just after eleven and "Quinn" was flashing across the screen, Puck let out a huge sigh of relief before answering eagerly, "Hey."

"Hi. Were you asleep?" she asks, her voice soft.

"No. And even if I was, it's never a bad time for you to call, remember?" he reminds her. Although, honestly, he's glad that she was apparently just joking about calling him between two and four in the morning. He doesn't have to be at work until ten tomorrow, which is later than the last few Saturdays, but he's still glad that his sleep won't be getting interrupted.

"How about your mom and your sister? Are they asleep?"

Kind of an odd question, Puck thinks. "Yeah. Kel's been in bed for over an hour and my mom has been for about fifteen minutes," he answers wondering where this conversation was going.

"That's what I figured, which is why I didn't knock," she responds.

"You're here?" he deduces.

"Yeah," she responds softly and it's then that he realizes why her voice sound different. Besides her voice being quiet, she sounds upset- or, more accurately, like she's struggling not to be.

He heads for the door immediately, hanging up his phone in the process, turning the locks quietly and opening it the same. He takes in her red-rimmed eyes and the tears that seem to be forming as they stare back at him and asks, "What's wrong? What happened?"

Quinn gives in then, to everything she's feeling, to all of the pain the day and the last twenty-one weeks had brought. In the blink of an eye she's hugging him. Clinging to him as she cries deep, hushed sobs.

He wraps his arms around her and holds her tight. He guides her away from the door so he can shut it and then continues guiding her into the living room to the couch. He sits her down, with him right next to her so she can still cry on him. He rubs his hand across her back soothingly, places the occasional kiss in her hair, and whispers her promises that everything will be all right.

It takes a while, but once her sobs stop and her tears slow, Puck asks Quinn, "What happened today?" By the way she's been crying he's honestly kind of terrified of what she may say.

"I don't know," Quinn admits, voice hoarse and watery. "I just…I thought it would be different. I thought that at one of the places I'd feel something, like it was right, and I'd know it was the right place to go with and therefore the right decision to make." She says all of this still leaning heavily on his chest, his back slouched against the back of the couch. If she had moved so she could meet his eyes, she might not talk as freely. She continues confessing, "Nothing like that happened though. And then the woman at the first place said that I should stop trying to decide based on the baby's future because either way she's going to be cared for and loved. Instead, I should think about what I want. Do I want to be a mom now? Do I think I could be? Or do I want to go back to being a regular high school student and try to work my way through college?"

Oookay. Puck isn't quite sure what the right thing to say would be here. A gut feeling about the agency is something he can kind of understand, but currently his gut is telling him that fact that that was missing for her wasn't the most important thing she said. What was though, he's not sure. He takes a chance and offers, "Well, if it helps, I think you could be a great mom now. If you wanted to be."

"Thanks," she says with a small smile. But reality quickly comes back to her and she says, "That's the problem though- what I want. I don't know what I want." She asks with a little bit of hope in her voice, "Do you know what you want? Could you see yourself as a dad now or not?"

That was certainly a heavy question. As much as he wanted to lie so he could maybe get to the relationship with Quinn he wanted, he couldn't do that to her. So he tells her honestly, "I don't really know either. Could I see myself taking care of a kid and juggling senior year next year? Sure. But it wouldn't be just next year it'd be forever if we kept her. That's a long commitment. And honestly, committing to anything for forever is…scary." He thinks about it for a few beats of silence and adds on, "I don't know if the woman who told you to think of it in terms of our futures is right though. What we choose impacts the baby most of all. Maybe she'll be cared for and loved either way, but there are a lot of other things that are different depending on what we choose. Right?"

"Welcome to my day," Quinn responds to his confusion with a humorless chuckle.

"I think I'm starting to get a headache," Puck comments.

"Yep," Quinn agrees. She's had one off an on for hours now. "No matter which way I think of any of it, none of the reasons behind any choice seem right or good anymore. I just keep getting more and more lost," Quinn says solemnly, summing up her conclusions of the day.

(She was leaving something out here. She didn't want to lead Puck on to thinking that she was leaning either way on a decision because technically she wasn't. But if the Friday before last had taught her anything it was that losing her daughter would break her. But not wanting to end up with a permanently broken heart isn't a good enough reason to decide to keep her, right?

This was the point that she always got stuck. No reason seemed like a good enough one to keep her and while many reasons seemed good enough to give her up, they didn't _feel_ right.)

With the hand on the arm he's got wrapped around her, Puck strokes Quinn's arm as he promises, "We'll figure it out." He mostly believes himself, but guessing that Quinn's probably even less sure he offers semi-joking, "And if a while passes and we still haven't figured out what's right, we'll ask my mom. You know she has an opinion for everything."

Quinn laughs a little, which was the response Puck was going for.

They sit for a minute in silence. Quinn's head still resting on Puck's chest, his arm secure around her.

"You should get some sleep," Puck says eventually after he notices her yawn. It had been a long day and he knew she had been feeling more tired in the last month or so.

"Yeah, I need to get home," Quinn agrees…without opening her eyes. Her legs had been partially up on the couch, but she slides them up fully on to the couch so she's really lying down now.

"Like I'd let you drive home now," Puck mutters quietly because he's pretty sure she's well on her way to falling asleep and he doesn't want to startle her awake by speaking in a normal tone. There was no way he'd let her drive home alone given how upset she had been tonight and given how tired she had to be (and apparently was given how quickly she seemed to be drifting off).

Quinn knew she should probably go home. Snuggling up to Puck didn't exactly stick to her platonic rule (although neither did the frequently shared lingering hugs). But the last two days had left her feeling completely defeated about the future so she figured screw it, being here with him like this made her feel better and she really needs that right now.

Puck slouches down a little more on the couch once he's sure she's fallen asleep so his getting comfortable doesn't disturb her. He wraps his arm a little further around her so that his fingertips are just barely reaching her stomach. He falls asleep within minutes.

(Here's something you should know: She'll wake up tomorrow in front of May still _on_ Puck. She'll be slightly embarrassed, but she won't rush out. She's already missed church so there's nowhere for her to rush to. So instead she eats with May and Kelyn while Puck hurries to get ready for work. When he leaves for work she joins him walking out to her car too. They don't talk about her spending the night- or how neither one of them are opposed to it happening again even if the couch was wildly uncomfortable.

Later, after she's showered and changed her clothes and made a requisite phone call to her sister, she finds herself at Target picking up some necessities. But this time is different than every other trip because she lets herself wander to the baby section, unable to stop her feet from heading that direction after the week and a half she's had. She looks at all of the things a baby needs to have and does a lot of math in her head. The total she comes up with seems like a pretty high percent of her total savings and it doesn't provide her with the slightest bit of hope.

She fills out another application before she leaves though, unable to give up yet.)

* * *

**A/N: Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed the chapter. **

The next chapter title is…something I can't reveal. If I were to tell all of you what it is, you'd know something that's going to happen in the next chapter that will be more enjoyable if it's more a surprise. I can tell you, however, that the chapter will start at Regional's and it will cover a time span of a few weeks.

As usual I'm hoping that the next chapter doesn't take nearly as long as this one did. Despite all of my recent interviews going very well, I still didn't get a job so I'm stuck subbing again and I have yet to get any work subbing so my schedule is actually pretty free for the moment and I'm hoping that that will equal tons of time to write. And hopefully I didn't just jinx myself by saying that.

**Thank you again for reading and PLEASE REVIEW!**


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